Besides, the rules around country of origin are complicated, and some countries have product description law about this. And what's to stop Amazon sellers sticking fake country of origin on, as they can already do for CE marking?
Or the reverse: Amazon stick a China flag on iPhones. Apple are going to get extremely upset about this and sue/offer money to change that to a US flag.
How do they get the information, though? Oblige resellers to put it on? Who then proceed to lie about it? It's just the "fake commingling" problem all over again.
Not an Amazon engineer (I work at AWS). But how would that be workable at Amazon's scale?
Who declares the country of origin? Who ensures compliance for item? How is compliance done? Do you review every single item?
How do you ensure that manufacturers update their country of origin declaration if/wehen they change downstream procurement? If you the raw materials are sourced in China and assembled in Vietnam, does that count as a Vietnamese product?
Amazon still has trouble with fake reviews, brushing scams, and straight-up counterfeits. Adding another system that needs to be policed doesn't seem like a very good idea. Especially when that system (country of origin flag on every product) has questionable upside.
Don't forget that for trade purposes (customs!) every item that is crossing borders already need to declare COO and that documentation and rules exist how to assign it based on value-added manufacturing steps.
At least with Alibaba you're going right to the source and not paying some reseller's markup or for the 'free' Prime shipping that just gets baked into prices on Amazon.
Wouldn’t it push people to higher cost and higher margin products (locally made or from more ethical sources) and thereby increase their profits? Seems to me like you could make a strong case for it
