Amid the public spanking President Donald Trump has been administering to Amazon this week is the reality that the federal government is a billion-dollar client of the online retailer, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Amazon also is the world leader in computing services, and it has been working with the federal government since 2015 to transition it off of legacy mainframes and into the cloud, the WSJ reports.
It's a contract that one research firm put at $2.8 billion for this year and $4.6 billion in 2019, the WSJ reports.
Further, Amazon is pursuing a 10-year, $10 billion deal with the Defense Department, the Journal reports.
Amazon has been in the president's crosshairs of late for myriad issues - putting brick-and-mortar retailers out of business, not paying its fair share of taxes, and using the Postal Service as its "delivery boy" despite the USPS losing money, an issue that continues to spur debate about its veracity.
While the White House on Wednesday said Trump is not involved in awarding the DOD contract, Trump's attacks on the Jeff Bezos-owned business have factored into the equation nonetheless.
"The overriding question is whether there is risk to Amazon because Trump seems to have it in for the company," Tom Forte, an analyst at D.A. Davidson & Co., told the Journal.
Right on cue, Oracle co-CEO Safra Catz, whose company also seeks the Pentagon cloud computing contract, was invited to the White House by Peter Thiel on Tuesday to dine with Trump and complained about Amazon's leg-up when it comes to government contracts.
"We have no favorites. We want the best solution for the department," Navy Commander Patrick Evans, a Pentagon spokesman, told Bloomberg.
Amazon's most important early government deal was securing the contract with the intelligence agencies in 2013, including the CIA, to house data, the Journal reports.
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