A simmering feud between President Biden and Jeff Bezos has spilled into the open after the Amazon founder went on the offensive to criticize the White House’s approach to inflation and taxing wealthy corporations. 

Biden has frequently used Amazon as a foil as he pushes for higher taxes on the richest Americans and big companies to help fund his economic agenda, and he recently vocally backed unionization efforts at the company.

But Bezos’s tweets accusing the president of “misdirection” and of risking worse inflation with his economic proposals, and the White House’s sharp response, marked an escalation in what has become an increasingly adversarial relationship.

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Robyn Shapiro, a spokesperson for the American Economic Liberties Project, said Bezos’s Twitter feud with Biden is an effort by the Amazon chief to show his own political power.

“Whether it’s on Twitter or in other venues, what we’re watching is Bezos flex political power that accompanies the extreme economic power that he maintains,” she said.

“And I don’t find it shocking at all to see someone who maintains such extreme corporate power push back at a time when there is an enormous debate about the role that extreme corporate [power] plays in inflation,” she added.