• Some Amazon sellers are petitioning for the retail giant to change its buy box policies.
• Tariffs, especially on products from China, will force brands to raise prices.
• Amazon's buy box increases sales but is only added to items priced lower than competitors.

Dozens of Amazon sellers have signed a petition asking the e-commerce giant to reconsider its policies regarding its buy box, the entrepreneur who created the petition said.

The petition, which was written and circulated by e-commerce entrepreneur Brandon Fishman on Tuesday, says that since tariffs have forced many brands to consider raising their prices, they're finding themselves in a tricky situation regarding their Amazon product listings.

It's all about the buy box, long a source of stress for Amazon sellers.

"Winning" the buy box is key because it means your listing is the default purchase option and has the "Add to Cart" button on it, increasing the odds of beating competing listings to a sale.

Amazon uses a complex algorithm to determine which products win the buy box. As part of that process, it compares listed prices on Amazon to those on the same product at competitors, incentivizing sellers to always have the lowest price on Amazon.

Fishman said the fierce competition to have the lowest price on Amazon and, therefore, win the buy box means that sellers don't have as much control over their pricing as they would like.

This is especially relevant as businesses look to raise prices to weather the impact of tariffs. Since many brands also sell their products at major retailers, like Walmart and Target, that may require more notice of planned price changes in stores. Sellers can't quickly raise their prices on Amazon without risking losing the buy box, Fishman said.

"Amazon needs to give brands their own pricing power immediately," the petition reads.

Amazon representatives declined to comment on the petition but pointed to a 2020 blog post that explains how Amazon chooses which seller gets chosen for the buy box when multiple sellers are selling the same product.

"We don't want to disappoint customers, so if we or our independent sellers don't have a good offer that we're confident will preserve customer trust in our store, we won't feature an offer at all. We'd rather the customer not buy that product from Amazon than have a poor shopping experience and lose trust in Amazon," it reads.

"Of course, even when we choose not to feature a particular offer, customers can still view all of the available non-featured offers for that product."

Don't sell rather than sell at a loss

Fishman is the CEO of VitaCup, a vitamin-infused coffee and tea brand, and an Amazon marketing agency called Prime Team Agency. He told BI his clients have taken a variety of approaches in response to tariffs.

"Most people I know are just literally removing the product and not selling it because they can't sell it at a loss," he said. "People are just not sending in shipments to see what happens here the next few weeks."

BI reported earlier this month that Amazon employees, suppliers, and sellers were scrambling for solutions as they received little guidance from the company regarding how best to respond to the turmoil caused by Trump's tariffs.

David Cassarino is the director of Amazon marketing at digital growth firm National Positions. He said he signed Fishman's petition because it would be in his clients' best interest for Amazon to allow its sellers to raise prices without risking losing the buy box.

"Businesses need to react quickly to the tariffs, which have been changing daily, and right now they can't pivot fast enough due to the buy box suppressions from price increases," Cassarino said.

The global trade situation continues to evolve rapidly. On Wednesday, Trump said he would pause most of his planned tariffs and lower reciprocal tariffs to 10% for 90 days, except those on goods from China, which he raised to 125%. That means Amazon sellers are still feeling the heat from tariffs — A Jungle Scout survey from 2024 found that more than 70% of Amazon sellers source their products from China.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in an interview on CNBC Thursday morning he expected sellers would have to pass on the extra cost of tariffs to customers.

"I understand why, I mean, depending on which country you're in, you don't have 50% extra margin that you can play with," he said.

Bloomberg reported Wednesday that Amazon had canceled orders for products made by vendors in China and several other Asian countries.

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• Small business owners based in the US and abroad are worried about how tariffs will impact them.
• Etsy and Amazon sellers who produce stock overseas say they can't afford higher costs.
• Two business owners said they are already facing transport problems as tariffs impact shipping.

Small business owners who sell on Amazon and Etsy are having to decide what to do about President Donald Trump's tariffs which have rocked the global stock markets with the threat of increased import costs for Americans.

Business Insider spoke to three of them about how they're navigating the changing climate.

Lisa Lane

Lisa Lane sells her Rinseroo products, a line of slip-on shower hoses, out of the US but are made in China.

Lane, who started the business in 2019, told BI she is "frustrated by the misconception that these tariffs will lead to more domestic manufacturing."

For her small business, shifting production from Shanghai, China, to the US isn't feasible.

"We lack the infrastructure to do so, and outsourcing domestically would be prohibitively expensive," the 59-year-old based in New York said. "Our ability to manufacture overseas allows us to offer a high-quality product at an affordable price."

Lane told BI her business was already facing delays at US ports due to increased inspections.

"Recently, our last two containers were held for six weeks for a full inventory inspection, creating major supply chain disruptions," she said. "The delays at the port are affecting our ability to maintain adequate inventory to meet demand."

Lane said she believed this increase to be tariff-related. "They are checking to see that goods match what we claim is entering," she added.

Lane had projected the the tariffs Trump announced last week on Chinese goods would push annual cost of production up by $200,000. She said this would come out of her bottom line unless she increased costs to account for it.

"It's an enormous hit for a company with around $5 million in annual revenue," she said.

On Monday, Trump said he would add an additional 50% tariff on Chinese imports, after China retailed to Trump's tariffs saying they would impose a 34% tariff on US goods.

Lane said on Friday they weren't planning on absorbing the additional tariff. "We need to offset the cost to do business as usual," she added.

Joanna Read

Joanna Read makes historical costumes for private clients, theatrical and TV productions, and museums. The 39-year-old, based in Lincolnshire, England, said a quarter of her annual turnover is sales to the US through Etsy.

With the de minimis import threshold currently at $800 for products shipped out of the UK, she doesn't think there will be a direct impact on her sales.

The de minimis loophole means any packages entering the US valued at less than $800 are exempt from tariffs. However, President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday that will end the loophole for packages coming from China and Hong Kong as of May 2.

Trump hasn't mentioned any further changes to the loophole, but the executive order has received bipartisan support — a rarity amid the negative tariff feedback.

Read said if anything did change, "I would expect to see a significant downturn in sales."

Read said she is concerned that the confusion about UK imports into the States will deter American customers from buying from sellers like herself.

"It also goes without saying that if my American customers are facing increased costs elsewhere in their lives, then they're less likely to be spending with me," she said.

Looking long-term, Read said she focusing on growing her UK client base to make up for potential income deficits.

"It's always a background worry when you are a small, even micro, business if your potential audience shrinks," she said. "It seems such a shame in our shared global community that things seem to be becoming more and more insular."

Bernie Thompson

Bernie Thompson runs Plugable, a Washington-based company that designs and sells computer accessories on Amazon and their online storefront.

Thompson told BI they are preparing for tariffs to have a huge impact on their business if they remain in place. "There is nowhere for this pressure to go other than pushing up prices," he said.

Plugable started moving their production out of China to other countries in Asia nearly ten years ago, in part because of 2018 tariffs on Chinese goods.

Thompson had thought majority of his production pipeline would be unaffected as it comes from Vietnam, Taiwan, and Thailand, but on April 2, that changed. Now with the new tariffs, he told BI he's looking at taxes of over a third of the value of his imports.

"These tariffs are several times as large as our net profits on these goods. These orders are commitments to our partners," Thompson said.

Thompson said the most immediate impact was air freight congestion as sellers are rushing to get stock into the US before tariffs come into effect on Wednesday.

The electronics business owner said he's trying to protect his customers and staff from the knock-on impacts of tariffs: "We have over 50 full-time employees in the US and Canada. We're an American-owned company. That said, the numbers at play are larger than the margins of our business, so in time, we're forced to pass through all of the effects."

Thompson said he'd love to be an innovator for efficient, automated production in the US, but those plans would be "years in the making."