California’s attorney general unsealed Amazon emails showing three tactics the company uses to push vendors and rivals into raising prices—from coordinated price matches to pressuring sellers to pull cheaper listings. The evidence forms part of a 2022 lawsuit accusing Amazon of using its market power to inflate prices online and squeeze out lower-cost competitors.

• Amazon matches a rival's price only after nudging that rival to raise it first, then both sellers profit while shoppers pay more
• When a competitor's price is too low, Amazon pressures its own vendors to push that rival to raise prices—vendors comply within a day, fearing loss of Amazon's sales channel
• Amazon also pressures vendors to pull products from cheaper competing sites entirely, removing any reason for Amazon to lower its own price
• Evidence comes from unsealed internal emails in California's 2022 antitrust suit against Amazon's $2.66 trillion retail business