President Donald Trump’s tariff policy triggered a brief, dramatic and instructive retail scandal on Tuesday. Quite aside from the economic case against imposing a tax on imports, which is as strong as it is universal, the incident shows the practical difficulties of tariffs.

After a report that Amazon would display the cost of tariffs on their products, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said doing so would be a “hostile and political action.” Less than an hour later, Amazon issued a statement that though one of its teams discussed “the idea of listing import charges on certain products,” it was “never a consideration for the main Amazon site.” A company spokesman later clarified that the idea “was never approved and is not going to happen.”