Amazon employees plan to walk off the job Wednesday in protest of the company’s recent return-to-office mandate, layoffs and its environmental record.
Approximately 1,900 employees worldwide are expected to walk out at 3 p.m. ET, with about 900 of those workers gathering outside the Spheres, the massive glass domes that anchor Amazon’s Seattle headquarters, according to employee groups behind the effort. The walkout is being organized in part by Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, an influential worker organization that has repeatedly pressed the e-retailer on its climate stance.
The group said employees are walking out to highlight a “lack of trust in company leadership’s decision making.” Amazon recently initiated the largest layoffs in its 29-year history, cutting 27,000 jobs across its cloud computing, advertising and retail divisions, among several others, since last fall. On May 1, the company ordered corporate employees to start working from the office at least three days a week, largely bringing an end to the remote work arrangements some employees had settled into during the coronavirus pandemic.
Amazon employees are walking off the job at a precarious time inside the company. Amazon just wrapped up its employee cuts, and it continues to reckon with the rough economy and slowing retail sales, leaving staffers on the edge that further layoffs could still be in store.
Employees had urged Amazon leadership to drop the return-to-office mandate and crafted a petition, addressed to CEO Andy Jassy and the S-team. Staffers said the policy “runs contrary” to Amazon’s positions on diversity and inclusion, affordable housing, sustainability, and focus on being the “Earth’s Best Employer.”
The backlash to the return-to-office mandate spilled over into an internal Slack channel, and employees created a group called Remote Advocacy to express their concerns.
Amazon employees who moved during the pandemic or were hired for a remote role have expressed concern about how the return-to-office policy will affect them, CNBC previously reported. Amazon’s head count ballooned over the last three years, and it hired more employees outside of its key tech hubs such as Seattle, New York and Northern California as it embraced a more distributed workforce.
The company had previously said it would leave it up to individual managers to decide what working arrangements worked best for their teams.
Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser said in a statement that the company has so far been pleased with the results of its return-to-office push.
“There’s more energy, collaboration, and connections happening, and we’ve heard this from lots of employees and the businesses that surround our offices,” Glasser added. “We understand that it’s going to take time to adjust back to being in the office more and there are a lot of teams at the company working hard to make this transition as smooth as possible for employees.”
Amazon says it has 65,000 corporate and tech employees in the Puget Sound region and roughly 350,000 corporate and tech workers worldwide.
Employees are also using the walkout to draw attention to concerns that Amazon isn’t meeting its climate commitments. They pointed to Amazon’s most recent sustainability report, which showed its carbon emissions jumped 40% in 2021 from 2019, the year it unveiled its “Climate Pledge” plan. Staffers also highlighted a report last year by Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting that found the company undercounts its carbon footprint by only counting product carbon emissions from the use of Amazon-branded goods, and not those it buys from manufacturers and sells directly to the consumer.
Additionally, Amazon recently eliminated one of its climate goals, called Shipment Zero, wherein the company pledged to make half of all its shipments carbon neutral by 2030. Amazon said it would focus on its broader Climate Pledge, which includes a provision to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2040, a decade later than its original Shipment Zero commitment.
“Our goal is to change Amazon’s cost/benefit analysis on making harmful, unilateral decisions that are having an outsized impact on people of color, women, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities, and other vulnerable people,” the group said.
Glasser said Amazon continues to “push hard” to be net carbon zero across its business by 2040. The company remains on track to reach 100% renewable energy by 2025, he added.
“While we all would like to get there tomorrow, for companies like ours who consume a lot of power, and have very substantial transportation, packaging, and physical building assets, it’ll take time to accomplish,” Glasser said.
Apple’s iPhone 16 at an Apple Store on Regent Street in London on Sept. 20, 2024.
Rasid Necati Aslim | Anadolu | Getty Images
Apple has made moves to diversify its supply chain beyond China to places like India and Vietnam, but tariffs announced by the White House are set to hit those countries too.
China will face a 34% tariff, but with the existing 20% rate, that brings the true tariff rate on Beijing under this Trump term to 54%, CNBC reported. India faces a 26% tariff, while Vietnam’s rate is 46%.
Apple was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.
Here’s a breakdown on Apple’s supply chain footprint that could be affected by tariffs.
China
The majority of Apple’s iPhones are still assembled in China by partner Foxconn.
China accounts for around 80% of Apple’s production capacity, according to estimates from Evercore ISI in a note last month.
Around 90% of iPhones are assembled in China, Evercore ISI said.
While the number of manufacturing sites in China dropped between Apple’s 2017 and 2020 fiscal year, it has since rebounded, Bernstein said in a note last month. Chinese suppliers account for around 40% of Apple’s total, Bernstein said.
Evercore ISI estimates that 55% of Apple’s Mac products and 80% of iPads are assembled in China.
India
Apple is targeting around 25% of all iPhones globally to be made in India, a government minister said in 2023.
India could reach about 15%-20% of overall iPhone production by the end of 2025, Bernstein analysts estimate. Evercore ISI said around 10% to 15% of iPhones are currently assembled in India.
Vietnam
Vietnam has emerged in the past few years as a popular manufacturing hub for consumer electronics. Apple has increased its production in Vietnam.
Around 20% of iPad production and 90% of Apple’s wearable product assembly like the Apple Watch takes place in Vietnam, according to Evercore ISI.
Other key countries
Malaysia is a growing manufacturing location for Apple for Macs and is facing a 25% tariff. Thailand is also a small hub for Mac production and will be hit with a 36% levy.
Apple also sources components from South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and the United States. Components may be shipped from one country to another before assembly takes place in China or elsewhere.
In February, Apple announced plans to open a new factory for artificial intelligence servers in Texas as part of a $500 billion investment in the U.S.
However, Apple does not have mass production in the United states. It produces only the Mac Pro in Texas.
A Xiaomi store in Shanghai, China, on March 16, 2025.
Qilai Shen/Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Chinese electric carmakers Xiaomi, Xpeng and Leapmotor each delivered nearly 30,000 or more cars in March, roughly twice several of their fellow startup competitors.
It’s a sign of how some automakers are pulling ahead, while BYD remains the market leader by far.
Xiaomi delivered a record number of electric vehicles in March, exceeding 29,000 units, the company announced on social media. That topped its prior run of delivering more than 20,000 vehicles in each of the past five months.
The SU7, Xiaomi’s flagship model, was involved in a crash on a highway on Tuesday that left three dead. The automaker on Tuesday afternoon released a statement on Chinese social media that the vehicle was in navigation on autopilot mode before the accident.
Based on preliminary information, the road was obstructed because of construction. The driver took control of the car but collided with construction infrastructure. Xiaomi added in the release that investigations were underway.
That came two weeks after the automaker announced on March 18 its goal to deliver 350,000 vehicles this year. There are also talks of the automaker expanding its second EV factory in Beijing to meet demand, Bloomberg reported on March 18. Xiaomi did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Its competitor Xpeng in March delivered 33,205 vehicles, the fifth consecutive month it has delivered over 30,000 units per month and reflecting a 268% surge in deliveries from the same month last year. March is also the fifth consecutive month the company has delivered over 15,000 units of the Mona M03.
Li Autodelivered 36,674 vehicles in March, a 26.5% year-over-year increase, but fewer than every month in the second half of 2024. The company’s cars had gained early traction with Chinese consumers since most come with a fuel tank for charging the vehicle’s battery, reducing anxiety about driving range.
BYD sold 371,419 passenger vehicles in March, reflecting a year-over-year growth of 57.9%. Its overseas sales volume also hit a record high of 72,723 units in March.
Across the board, major companies across China’s electric car industry reported deliveries rose last month, indicating a pick-up in demand from the seasonally soft first two months of the year.
U.S. automaker Tesla sold 78,828 electric vehicles in China in March, marking a 11.5% year-over-year decline in growth.
Other Chinese carmakers saw growth in deliveries but some still struggled to break through the 20,000-unit mark.
Niodelivered 15,039 vehicles, a 26.7% year-over-year growth, but well below the number of cars delivered in the months of May to December last year. Nio-owned Onvo, which markets its electric vehicles as family-oriented, in March recorded 15,039 units in deliveries.
Aito, as of April 2, has not published its delivery numbers for March. The automaker, which uses Huawei tech in its vehicles, on social media had reported monthly deliveries of 34,987 and 21,517 in January and February, respectively.
Quarterly performance
On a first-quarter basis, BYD remained in the lead with 986,098 vehicles sold. The automaker, which overtook Tesla in annual sales last year, surpassed the U.S. EV giant in battery electric vehicles sales this quarter.
Tesla sold 172,754 vehicles in China in the first quarter this year, according to monthly delivery numbers published by the China Passenger Car Association.
Xpeng also reported strong growth, with a total of 94,008 vehicles delivered in the quarter ending in March, reflecting a 331% year-over-year growth.
Leapmotor saw quarterly deliveries more than double to 87,552 units from 33,410 units the same period in 2024, according to publicly available numbers the company published.
However, Li Auto and Nio reported weaker growth than their competitors in the first quarter of the year.
Nio saw 42,094 vehicles delivered in the three months ended March 2025, an increase of 40.1% year over year. Li Auto saw a slower year-over-year growth of 15.5%, with a total of 92,864 vehicles delivered.
Wednesday’s announcement, which came alongside a set of sweeping new tariffs, gives customs officials, retailers and logistics companies more time to prepare. Goods that qualify under the de minimis exemption will be subject to a duty of either 30% of their value, or $25 per item. That rate will increase to $50 per item on June 1, the White House said.
Use of the de minimis provision has exploded in recent years as shoppers flock to Chinese e-commerce companies Temu and Shein, which offer ultra-low cost apparel, electronics and other items. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection has said it processed more than 1.3 billion de minimis shipments in 2024, up from over 1 billion shipments in 2023.
Critics of the provision say it provides an unfair advantage to Chinese e-commerce companies and creates an influx of packages that are “subject to minimal documentation and inspection,” raising concerns around counterfeit and unsafe goods.
The Trump administration has sought to close the loophole over concerns that it facilitates shipments of fentanyl and other illicit substances on the claims that the packages are less likely to be inspected by customs agents.
Temu and Shein have taken steps to grow their operations in the U.S. as the de minimis loophole has come under greater scrutiny. After onboarding sellers with inventory in U.S. warehouses, Temu recently began steering shoppers to those items on its website, allowing it to speed up deliveries. Shein opened distribution centers in states including Illinois and California in 2022, and a supply chain hub in Seattle last year.