Donald Trump threatens to crush Amazon over its "antitrust problem"

Donald Trump has slammed Amazon's tax affairs, claiming that the company has "a huge antitrust problem".

The notoriously outspoken US presidential frontrunner delivered the comments in an interview with Fox News, where he also claimed that Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos was manipulating US politicians for financial gain.

"[The Washington Post] is owned as a toy by Jeff Bezos," Trump claimed. "He's using The Washington Post for power so that the politicians in Washington don't tax Amazon like they should be taxed".

"[Bezos] thinks I'll go after him for antitrust, because he's got a huge antitrust problem," Trump told Fox News.

This is not the first time that Trump has fallen out with Democrat Party donor Bezos, and the real estate mogul levelled threats at Amazon and the Post earlier this year.

"Believe me, if I become president, oh, do they have problems. They're going to have such problems," he said at a rally earlier this year. "[Bezos] wanted political influence so that Amazon will benefit from it - that's not right."

Some sources have speculated that Trump's latest comments have come as a result of the Post's investigation into him. The paper announced this week that it would be tasking a team of 20 reporters to dig into the entrepreneur's life and business deals.

This is also not the first time that Amazon has been caught up in antitrust investigations. EU antitrust tzar Margrethe Vestager is currently sniffing around the company's ebook business, to determine if the company is abusing its position of market dominance.

Adam Shepherd

Adam Shepherd has been a technology journalist since 2015, covering everything from cloud storage and security, to smartphones and servers. Over the course of his career, he’s seen the spread of 5G, the growing ubiquity of wireless devices, and the start of the connected revolution. He’s also been to more trade shows and technology conferences than he cares to count.

Adam is an avid follower of the latest hardware innovations, and he is never happier than when tinkering with complex network configurations, or exploring a new Linux distro. He was also previously a co-host on the ITPro Podcast, where he was often found ranting about his love of strange gadgets, his disdain for Windows Mobile, and everything in between.

You can find Adam tweeting about enterprise technology (or more often bad jokes) @AdamShepherUK.