Keep those buckets handy; the tariff roller-coaster ride ain’t over yet.
Techie types were feeling a little less yippy on April 14 as stocks were climbing in response to President Donald Trump’s temporary reprieve on tech-sector tariffs.
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Electronic goods are still subject to the 20% tariff on China, the White House said.
The good times started rolling over the weekend when the administration said it had excluded smartphones, computers and other consumer electronics from tariffs.
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On Sunday, however, Trump posted on Truth Social that there “was no Tariff exemption announced on Friday” and that semiconductor tariffs will “just be moving to a different Tariff ‘bucket.’
“NOBODY is getting ‘off the hook’ for the unfair Trade Balances, and Non Monetary Tariff Barriers, that other Countries have used against us, especially not China which, by far, treats us the worst!”
Mark Heppenstall, president and chief investment officer at Penn Mutual Asset Management, said that while equity-market volatility is capturing most of the headlines, “the Treasury bond market is also feeling the pain from possible trade wars.”
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has said it’s hard to know what’s going to happen with the current tariff situation.
Amazon shares down year-to-date
“Last week’s meltdown, with long-term Treasury yields rising nearly 50 basis points, almost certainly factored into the Trump administration’s decision to take a 90-day pause on the higher, reciprocal tariffs outside China,” he added.
Amazon (AMZN)  has a stake in the tariff wars since the e-commerce giant’s third-party marketplace is made up of millions of sellers, many of which are based in China or source their products from the region. Third-party sellers now account for about 60% of all products sold on Amazon’s website.
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Chief Executive Andy Jassy said in a recent interview with CNBC that the company had done some “strategic forward inventory buys” and looked to renegotiate terms on some purchase orders in an effort to keep prices low.
“It’s hard to know what’s really going to happen,” Jassy said. “We’re going to try to do everything we can to keep prices as low as possible for customers.”
Amazon has reportedly decided to cancel orders for products made in China and other Asian countries,Â
Meanwhile, Fortune reported that Chinese suppliers are trying to keep their businesses humming by offering a simple — but illegal — solution to U.S. Amazon sellers: lying about the value of the Amazon merchandise they’re importing to the U.S. in a bid to lower the duties they’ll have to pay under the new slate of tariffs.Â
Amazon, which is scheduled to report earnings on April 29, has seen its stock slide 16% this year.
Amid the tariff turmoil, investment banks issued research reports on Amazon.
Analyst warns of Amazon earnings slide
DA Davidson lowered its price target on Amazon to $230 from $280 and affirmed a buy rating on the shares as part of a note updating estimates within the firm’s coverage of the software group, TheFly reported.
The firm is now assuming a base case of one or two quarters of negative GDP in the U.S. this year, which will translate to lower growth and has already translated to lower valuations.
DA Davidson said that regardless of how the current tariff regime plays out, it sees a consumer activity and corporate investment slowing, at least for the next couple of quarters.
Deutsche Bank slashed its price target on Amazon.com to $206 from $287 and maintained a buy rating.
The investment firm says incremental tariff costs on goods out of China, Vietnam and the rest of the world, in addition to slowing Amazon advertising revenue growth, could bring Amazon’s 2025 earnings down by 15%.
The puts and takes across Amazon’s business are “obviously enormous,” and further pressure at Web Services, the company’s cloud computing division, and the international business could squeeze earnings, Deutsche Bank wrote. Potential offsets include lower fuel costs, growth from positive economic policies, and potential job cuts, the firm said.
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Deutsche Bank says the stock’s current levels “represent a reasonable floor for [the] shares.”
Citi lowered its price target on Amazon to $225 from $273 and reiterated a buy rating.
The move reflects the 145% tariffs on China and 10% baseline tariffs on other countries, weakening consumer sentiment, and more limited macroeconomic visibility,
The investment firm reduced projections and price targets across its online advertising and e-commerce coverage.
Despite the 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs, Citi economists continue to expect a “significant slowdown” in growth and rise in inflation, which are likely to affect e-commerce and online advertising budgets, the analyst tells investors in a research note.
Facebook parent Meta Platforms (META)  remains Citi’s top pick given the company’s “continued engagement strength, its product super-cycle, and ads innovation across its primarily performance-based advertising business.”Â
Amazon is Citi’s second pick in the sector, the firm said.
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