the US during the same period. Amazon countered that it had a 24% effective tax rate during the same period. Effects on small businesses Due to its size and economies of scale, Amazon is able to out price local small-scale shopkeepers. Stacy Mitchell and Olivia Lavecchia, researchers with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, argue that this has caused most local small-scale shopkeepers to close down in a number of cities and towns in the United States. Additionally, a merchant cannot have an item in the warehouse available to sell prior to Amazon if they choose to list it as well. Many times fraudulent charges have been made on the company banking and financial channels without approval, since Amazon prides itself on keeping all financial data permanently on file in their database. If they charge your account they will not refund the money back to the account they took it from, they will only provide an Amazon credit. Additionally, there is not any merchant customer support which at times needs to be handled in real-time. U.S. Post Office deal In early 2018, President Donald Trump repeatedly criticized Amazon's use of the United States Postal Service and its prices for the delivery of packages, stating, "I am right about Amazon costing the United States Post Office massive amounts of money for being their Delivery Boy," Trump tweeted. "Amazon should pay these costs (plus) and not have them by the American Taxpayer." Amazon's shares fell by 6 percent as a result of Trump's comments. Shepard Smith of Fox News disputed Trump's claims and pointed to evidence that the USPS was offering below-market prices to all customers with no advantage to Amazon. However, analyst Tom Forte pointed to the fact that Amazon's payments to the USPS are not made public and that their contract has a reputation for being "a sweetheart deal". HQ2 bidding war The announcement of Amazon's plan to build a second headquarters, dubbed HQ2, was met with 238 proposals, 20 of which became finalist cities on January 18, 2018. In November 2018, Amazon was criticized for narrowing this down to "the two richest cities", namely Long Island City and Arlington, Virginia, which are in the New York metropolitan area and Washington metropolitan area respectively. Critics, including business professor Scott Galloway, described the bidding war as "a con" and stated that it was a pretext for gaining tax breaks and insider information