Andy Jassy said he doesn’t have the “perfect answer” for CEOs as companies grapple with whiplash over tariffs — but he has some advice: “Stay focused.”
“You can get distracted by, you know, are there going to be tariffs? How high are the tariffs? Are there not going to be tariffs? What do other countries’ relationships look like with these countries?” the Amazon CEO said during the Harvard Business Review Leadership Summit on Tuesday.
Jassy said the number of things going on around the world and within the US right now “can be dizzying.” Since the start of his presidency, Trump has signed over 100 executive orders, made large cuts to the federal government, and has gone back and forth about tariff rates, which now stand at a 10% baseline tariff on imports for most countries, and tariffs as high as 245% on some goods from China. Despite uncertainty, Jassy said companies still have a purpose to fulfill.
“At the end of the day, we have a job to do,” Jassy said. “Which is to figure out what customers want and then to go deliver it for them.”
Leaders need to remember “what matters most” in those moments, the CEO said. While they should acknowledge that there’s a lot going on, they also should keep in mind that they can’t control everything, Jassy said.
The Amazon CEO said, “It’s not easy” to stay focused amid uncertainty. Even Amazon hasn’t been immune to political friction. Jassy’s comments come as the company just shut down a report that said it would list how much tariffs contribute to an item’s price. The White House criticized the move as a “hostile and political act.”
Jassy said Amazon has continued to tell itself internally that it’s “here to make customers’ lives easier and better.” The CEO said all of Amazon’s businesses have areas that can be improved for customers, and that’s where it tries to spend its time.
“Well-intended, passionate, mission-focused people read or hear about things and wonder how it’s going to affect them,” Jassy said.
Sometimes, those things do impact companies, and companies need to figure out how to operate accordingly. However, by not reacting to all the noise, leaders will save themselves from having to do “every little bit of early-stage work.”
“By and large, if you stay focused on the issues you know customers care about, you will do right by your customers, and you just will start a much higher starting spot,” Jassy said.
Amazon did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
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