The efforts of third-party sellers on platforms like Amazon to stock up on goods to avoid the cost of tariffs will reportedly work for only a limited time. Because shoppers are also buying ahead to avoid the impact of tariffs, merchants will eventually sell down their inventory, place new orders, and be faced with the challenge of trying to avoid price increases. It is unlikely sellers can stock up on enough inventory to meet their needs for more than six months and that they will feel the full impact of tariffs in the third or fourth quarter. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that demand had not yet softened because of tariffs and that if anything, the company had seen “heightened buying in certain categories that may indicate stocking up in advance of any potential tariff impact.” Amazon pulled forward inventory in the first quarter, while many marketplace merchants accelerated shipments to U.S. warehouses to insulate customers from price spikes. Jassy added that Amazon’s risk is muted relative to rivals because many traditional retailers buy from middlemen who themselves import from China, “so the total tariff will be higher for these retailers than for China-direct sellers” on Amazon’s platform.