U.S. President Donald Trump briefly erased $5.7 billion off the market value of Amazon.com Inc. on Wednesday, with a tweet attacking the online retail giant for “doing great damage to tax paying retailers.”

Amazonfell as much as 1.2 percent in pre-market trading after Trump's comments. They regained the lost value after markets opened in New York.

The president criticized Amazon on Twitter over taxes and jobs and accused the global retailer of hurting U.S. localities and causing job losses.

Amazon.com has said that it has more than 50,000 job openings across the United States to help fulfill customer orders and earlier this month hosted multiple job fairs to fill them.​

Amazon, facing potential criticism of its plan to buy Whole Foods Markets, continued its multi-million lobbying effort -- shelling out $3.2 million in the second quarter of this year - an increase from the $2.9 million spent in the first three months. 

Most antitrust experts expect the Federal Trade Commission to approve the planned merger.

Complicating the company's status in the nation's capital, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post -- a newspaper that has drawn the public ire of President Trump.

Candidate Trump famously said in May 2016 that Amazon has "a huge antitrust problem."

Amazon is on pace to spend more than $12 million this year, if they keep up their lobbying efforts at the same rate. In 2016, the online retailer spent $11 million on lobbying in Washington.

The company's lobbying effort more than doubled in 2015 compared with prior years, spending $9 million that year compared with $4.7 million the year before.

Amazon added a new firm to the lobbying army in the second quarter of 2017, hiring McGuireWoods Consulting to handle work on drones, among other matters.

In addition to consultants, Amazon also employs in-house lobbyists. Their latest filing lists some 15 employees who lobby on behalf of the company on a long list of topics and issues ranging from drone policy to trade regulations and immigration to food stamp programs.

Amazon also employs firms to lobby on its behalf on a range of topics. In the second quarter of this year, Amazon paid lobbying megafirm Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld $80,000 to lobby, primarily focused on the Marketplace Fairness Act - a bill that would allow state government to collect sales tax from online retailers.

Amazon Prime Air, a subsidiary of the company, also paid Akin Gump to lobby on drone policy. They also filed a termination, indicating they won't be doing work for the subsidiary in future.