Amazon Sellers Reportedly Skipping Prime Day Due to Tariffs

For years, Amazon’s Prime Day has been a prime opportunity for the company’s third-party merchants.

But amid an ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China sparked by President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods, some sellers are sitting out this year’s shopping event or scaling back their discounts, Reuters reported Monday (April 28).

For example, Rick Sliter, CEO of pillow company MedCline, told Reuters he will likely hold back discounts on Prime Day — scheduled for July — even though his company saw sales seven times higher than normal during last year’s event.

“Last year Prime Day was a no-brainer,” said Sliter. “But if tariffs continue, discounting gets thrown out the window.”

Another merchant, bike and skateboard seller Steve Green, said he would be skipping Prime Day for the first time since 2020.

He’s also holding back products he imported from China before the tariffs, with plans to sell them later at full price. The 145% tariffs will more than double his costs of goods on newly imported products, making it “unaffordable,” said Green.

As Reuters notes, Prime Day has long been one of Amazon’s biggest yearly shopping events after Black Friday and Cyber Monday, with the company spending millions to promote the sale each year.

The tariffs, said CFRA Research analyst Arun Sundaram, have placed Amazon in an awkward position as Prime Day approaches.

“Amazon will be fine, but I do feel for some of the third-party sellers — they’re the ones that are going to be hurt the most in this environment,” Sundaram said.

“We’re pleased by the strong response from selling partners to Prime Day 2025 and look forward to bringing customers discounts across a wide selection of products,” Amazon said in a statement provided to PYMNTS.

“As always, Amazon continues to focus on providing customers consistently the lowest prices as well as fantastic extra savings during our deal events across the widest selection of products, with fast, reliable delivery. We’re working with our broad, varied range of valued selling partners in our store to support them in adapting to the developing environment while maintaining low prices for customers.”

Interviewed by CNBC earlier this month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the company’s third-party sellers are likely to try to pass the cost of tariffs on to shoppers. He added that Amazon is doing everything it can to keep prices as low as possible.

“We’ve done some strategic forward inventory buys, to get as many items as makes sense for customers at lower prices,” Jassy said. “There are some cases where we have deals that were negotiated that weren’t done, where we’ll renegotiate terms to make it easier for customers to have lower prices.”

And as reported here recently, both Amazon and rival Walmart are working on ways to overhaul their supply chains in response to the tariffs.