Tariffs shake up Amazon Prime Day as sellers pull out, shoppers hold back
Corrections & Clarifications: An earlier version of this story misstated which retailers were covered by Adobe's forecast. The figures apply across all online retailers for Amazon Prime Days.
Tariffs and economic uncertainty are on the minds of shoppers as they prepare for Amazon's summer Prime Day sales.
But at least one company is forecasting that sales for the online sales event will break records as budget-conscious shoppers look for deals.
Amazon is holding its annual Prime Day sales from July 8 through July 11 – twice as long as last year's event. The event, open to Prime members, has also offered early-access deals.
Still, some Amazon third-party sellers are sitting out this Prime Day, amid pressures from tariffs.
Adobe forecasts online sales to top $23 billion
A record $23.8 billion in sales is expected to be spent by consumers across all online retailers for Amazon Prime Days, Adobe said in a forecast released on July 7. That's a 28.4% increase year over year and $9.6 billion more than the comparable period last year. Last year, online shoppers spent $14.2 billion during the two-day Amazon Prime event, according to Adobe. Adobe tracks online transactions covering more than 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites and said their spending data is aggregated and anonymized. so it doesn't directly track Amazon's sales, but suggests demand for the Prime Day deals.
Adobe said discounts for online retailers during Prime Days are expected to remain at historically high levels – on par with the major deals that consumers saw last year during the shorter sale. Overall, discounts across U.S. retailers will range from 10% to 24% off list prices with apparel expected to have the biggest deals at 24%, Adobe said. Other categories with major discounts include electronics (22%), televisions (17%), appliances (16%), toys (15%) furniture (14%), computers, (12%) and sporting goods (10%).
Consumers are also expected to "trade up" to higher-ticket items, driven by strong discounts Adobe said.
In updated sales figures reported on July 9, Adobe said shoppers spent $7.9 billion at U.S. online retailers on July 8, the first day of the Amazon Prime Day event. That's a 9.9% growth from last year and marks the single biggest e-commerce day so far this year. That also beat the $6.1 billion spent on Thanksgiving Day 2024, but was under Black Friday, when $10.8 billion was spent.
Tariffs are affecting consumer purchase plans
U.S. shoppers, in two separate surveys ahead of Prime Days, said looming tariffs were playing a role in how they are shopping.
In a 2025 summer spending survey of 1,024 U.S. shoppers by Smarty, an online shopping rewards app, shoppers were pretty evenly split in how tariffs were affecting their shopping habits for the Amazon sales. Thirty-two percent of shoppers said they were being more selective about purchases due to budget constraints, while 25% were planning to buy more items to avoid anticipated future price increases. Another 23% said they would focus specifically on categories likely to be affected by tariffs.
"This year's July Prime Day represents a perfect storm of seasonal shopping and economic anxiety," Vipin Porwal, founder and CEO at Smarty, said in a press release. "Consumers are leveraging the discounts not just for immediate needs, but as a hedge against potential future price increases in tariff-affected categories. Prime Day will be an early indicator for consumer savviness in using major sales events as opportunities to make strategic purchases ahead of anticipated price changes."
In another study of 1,000 consumers by Akeneo, more than half or 57% of those surveyed said tariffs are impacting their Prime Day shopping habits with 25% saying they planned to skip or buy less because of possible price hikes. Four percent of shoppers surveyed said they planned to shop with other retailers, according to the survey by Akeneo, a software company that works with retailers on its products.
Some sellers are not participating in Amazon Prime Day sale
Some third-party merchants who previously sold China-made goods during Amazon's July event told Reuters earlier this year that they would be sitting out this year or reducing the amount of discounted merchandise they offer.
The pullback, Reuters reported, was a way for sellers to protect profit margins amid the U.S China trade war.
In April, Kim Vaccarella, chief executive of China-made tote bag company Bogg Bag, told Reuters that she had decided to skip Prime Day this year. Vaccarella said she wanted to retain some of her unsold U.S. inventory and hoped to sell to retailers and smaller, independent shops, at full price or for smaller discounts. She had also halted production of the bags, which sell for $70 to $200 on Amazon, while she worked to move manufacturing to Cambodia and Vietnam.
Smaller third-party Amazon sellers are more impacted by tariff costs than larger retailers, said Katherine Black, a partner at global management consulting firm Kearney where she leads food, drug and mass market retail.
"There have been a number of small suppliers that have said 'Look, I did some forward buys, but I'm holding that inventory to try to sell it close to full price to manage my exposure and I'm not going to participate this year,' " Black told Paste BN.
Good deals will still be available
There will still be plenty of deals for shoppers to choose from during Prime Days, Black said. She anticipates potentially seeing what she called big, showcase deals each day from big-named brands.
"Those are techniques we'll see when retailers are trying to drive traffic," she said.
Lauren Beitelspacher, a professor in the marketing division of Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, whose area of study includes retail thinks the Prime Day event will be successful, especially since consumers are more price-conscious right now with tariffs and there is tariff confusion.
"I think customers are just really looking for a deal wherever they can get one," she told Paste BN.
Ten percent tariffs on goods imported to the U.S. began in April, with additional "reciprocal" tariffs on imports from more than 70 countries. President Donald Trump later delayed the reciprocal tariffs until July 9. The White House announced on July 7 that the deadline would be extended to August 1.
This story has been updated to add new information and to fix a typo.
Betty Lin-Fisher is a consumer reporter for Paste BN. Reach her at blinfisher@USATODAY.com or follow her on X, Facebook or Instagram @blinfisher and @blinfisher.bsky.social on Bluesky. Sign up for our free The Daily Money newsletter, which will include consumer news on Fridays, here.