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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Amazon has been accused of listing products from independent retailers without their consent, even as the ecommerce giant sues start-up Perplexity over its AI software shopping without permission.

The $2.5tn online retailer has listed some independent shops’ full inventory on its platform without seeking permission, four business owners told the Financial Times, enabling customers to shop through Amazon rather than buy directly.

Two independent retailers told the FT that they had also received orders for products that were either out of stock or were mispriced and mislabelled by Amazon leading to customer complaints.

“Nobody opted into this,” said Angie Chua, owner of Bobo Design Studio, a stationery store based in Los Angeles.

Tech companies are experimenting with artificial intelligence “agents” that can perform tasks like shopping autonomously based on user instructions.

Amazon has blocked agents from Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and a host of other AI start-ups from its website.

It filed a lawsuit in November against Perplexity, whose Comet browser was making purchases on Amazon on behalf of users, alleging that the company’s actions risked undermining user privacy and violated its terms of service.

In its complaint, Amazon said Perplexity had taken steps “without prior notice to Amazon and without authorisation” and that it degraded a customer shopping experience it had invested in over several decades.

Perplexity in a statement at the time said that the lawsuit was a “bully tactic” aimed at scaring “disruptive companies like Perplexity” from improving customers’ experience.

The recent complaints against Amazon relate to its “Buy for Me” function, launched last April, which lets some customers purchase items that are not listed with Amazon but on other retailers’ sites.

Retailers said Amazon did not seek their permission before sending them orders that were placed on the ecommerce site. They do not receive the user’s email address or other information that might be helpful for generating future sales, several sellers told the FT.

“We consciously avoid Amazon because our business is rooted in community and building a relationship with customers,” Chua said. “I don’t know who these customers are.”

Several of the independent retailers said Amazon’s move had led to poor experiences for customers, or hurt their business.

Sarah Hitchcock Burzio, the owner of Hitchcock Paper Co. in Virginia, said that Amazon had mislabelled items leading to a surge in orders as customers believed they were receiving more expensive versions of a product at a much lower price.

“There were no guardrails set up so when there were issues there was nobody I could go to,” she said.

Product returns and complaints for the “Buy for Me” function are handled by sellers rather than Amazon, even when errors are produced by the Seattle-based group.

Amazon enables sellers to opt out of the service by contacting the company on a specific email address.

Amazon said: “Shop Direct and Buy for Me are programmes we’re testing that help customers discover brands and products not currently sold in Amazon’s store, while helping businesses reach new customers and drive incremental sales.

“We have received positive feedback on these programmes. Businesses can opt out at any time.”

President Donald Trump said Tuesday night that Venezuela will turn over 30 million to 50 million barrels of oil to the United States, to be sold at market value and with the proceeds controlled by the US.

Interim authorities in Venezuela will turn over “sanctioned oil” Trump said on Truth Social.

The US will use the proceeds “to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States!” he wrote.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright has been directed to “execute this plan, immediately,” and the barrels “will be taken by storage ships, and brought directly to unloading docks in the United States.”

CNN has reached out to the White House for more information.

A senior administration official, speaking under condition of anonymity, told CNN that the oil has already been produced and put in barrels. The majority of it is currently on boats and will now go to US facilities in the Gulf to be refined.

Although 30 to 50 million barrels of oil sounds like a lot, the United States consumed just over 20 million barrels of oil per day over the past month.

That amount may lower oil prices a bit, but it probably won’t lower Americans’ gas prices that much: Former President Joe Biden released about four to six times as much — 180 million barrels of oil — from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve in 2022, which lowered gas prices by only between 13 cents and 31 cents a gallon over the course of four months, according to a Treasury Department analysis.

US oil fell about $1 a barrel, or just under 2%, to $56, immediately after Trump made his announcement on Truth Social.

Selling up to 50 million barrels could raise quite a bit of revenue: Venezuelan oil is currently trading at $55 per barrel, so if the United States can find buyers willing to pay market price, it could raise between $1.65 billion and $2.75 billion from the sale.

Venezuela has built up significant stockpiles of crude over since the United States began its oil embargo late last year. But handing over that much oil to the United States may deplete Venezuela’s own oil reserves.

The oil is almost certainly coming from both its onshore storage and some of the seized tankers that were transporting oil: The country has about 48 million barrels of storage capacity and was nearly full, according to Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at the Price Futures Group. The tankers were transporting about 15 million to 22 million barrels of oil, according to industry estimates.

It’s unclear over what time period Venezuela will hand over the oil to the United States.

The senior administration official said the transfer would happen quickly because Venezuela’s crude is very heavy, which means it can’t be stored for long.

But crude does not go bad if it is not refined in a certain amount of time, said Andrew Lipow, the president of Lipow Oil Associates, in a note. “It has sat underground for hundreds of millions of years. In fact, much of the oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been around for decades,” he wrote.