Amazon Argues With US Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders on Twitter

The Hill reports that Amazon engaged in "a heated Twitter exchange" with U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren "after the lawmaker claimed that it and other large corporations 'exploit loopholes and tax havens to pay close to nothing in taxes.'" The exchange began after Warren (Democrat - Massachusetts) tweeted a clip from Thursday's Senate Finance Committee hearing, in which she accused Amazon and other companies of "manipulating the tax code to avoid paying their fair share." Hours later, the Amazon News Twitter account responded with, "You make the tax laws @SenWarren; we just follow them." "If you don't like the laws you've created, by all means, change them," Amazon tweeted, adding that the tech giant "has paid billions of dollars in corporate taxes over the past few years alone...." The company added that since 2010, it has invested $350 billion in the U.S. economy and in 2020, added 400,000 new jobs across the country... Warren later Thursday evening hit back at Amazon, tweeting, "I didn't write the loopholes you exploit... your armies of lawyers and lobbyists did." "But you bet I'll fight to make you pay your fair share," she continued. "And fight your union-busting. And fight to break up Big Tech so you're not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets." UPDATE: Bernie Sanders was recently called out on Twitter by the retail chief of Amazon. "I often say we are the Bernie Sanders of employers, but that's not quite right because we actually deliver a progressive workplace." A recent article in Recode suggests the tweets may have been encouraged by Jeff Bezos: Amazon has long been at odds with Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren over their criticisms of the company's labor and business practices. But the discord reached a new height last week when Amazon aggressively went after both on Twitter in an unusual attack for a large corporation. With each new snarky tweet from an Amazon executive or the company's official Twitter account, insiders and observers alike asked a version of the same question: "What the hell is going on?" Turns out that Amazon leaders were following a broad mandate from the very top of the company: Fight back. Recode has learned that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos expressed dissatisfaction in recent weeks that company officials weren't more aggressive in how they pushed back against criticisms of the company that he and other leaders deem inaccurate or misleading. What followed was a series of snarky and aggressive tweets that ended up fueling their own media cycles. The timing was likely not coincidental. Bezos and other Amazon leaders are on edge as the company is facing the largest union election in its history at its Bessemer, Alabama warehouse.

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