After Amazon found itself in hot water with the Trump administration on Tuesday over tariffs, Coca-Cola (KO) CEO James Quincey explained why the company won’t reveal the impact of tariffs on its consumer products.
“We don’t break out elements of our cost structure anywhere across our cost structure. I’m not sure why I would do it differently for one element. I mean, then the next day you’ll ask me, well, why don’t you show this piece? And why don’t you show that piece?” Quincey told Yahoo Finance on Tuesday (video above).
Amazon was reportedly eyeing displaying how much Trump’s tariffs are adding to the product price, Punchbowl News reported. The Trump administration slammed Amazon for a potentially “hostile and political act.”
Read more about Coca-Cola’s stock moves and today’s market action.
The e-commerce giant later pushed back on the report, saying it was not going to happen but not denying it had pondered the initiative.
“Amazon’s response to this morning’s news reports: The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Haul store considered the idea of listing import charges on certain products. This was never approved and is not going to happen,” Amazon said in a statement published on X.
Added Coca-Cola’s Quincey, “We’re going to offer it [products] to the marketplace at a certain price. And we believe through our marketing and our innovation and our commercial policies and our execution and our packaging, we will earn the right to show the consumer that’s good value for the products we offer.”
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Quincey said Coca-Cola will not be raising prices at the moment to compensate for the impact of the trade war.
The company appears to be holding up relatively well for now. Shares of the beverage giant rose nearly 1% on Tuesday as it beat first quarter earnings and didn’t issue a warning with its full-year guidance. The company said in a statement that it expects the trade war’s impact to be “manageable” this year.
Read more: The latest news and updates on Trump’s tariffs
That isn’t to say consumers aren’t showing signs of being under pressure as large companies begin to raise prices to compensate for their higher costs of doing business.
In Coke’s North America business, for example, unit case volumes fell 3% as it raised prices by 8%. It was the second-largest price increase among Coke’s divisions, behind a 16% hike in Latin America.
Coke “remains a port in the storm,” JPMorgan analyst Andrea Teixeira said in a note.
