President Donald Trump blasted Walmart on Saturday after the nation’s biggest retailer warned it would need to raise prices this week due to tariffs.
“Walmart should stop trying to denounce tariffs as a reason to raise prices across chains,” Trump wrote in the Truth Society. “As they say between Walmart and China, they don’t charge valuable customers,” as they say, “eat tariffs.” “I’m watching.
“It’s a challenging environment as they haven’t seen prices rise at this magnitude at the speed they’ve come before,” Walmart CFO John David Rainey said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday.
As the nation’s largest retailer and largest grocery store, Walmart is often seen as a pioneer for the health of retailers and US consumers.
Rainey said: “I am pleased with the progress made by the (Trump) administration on tariffs from levels announced in early April, but it is still too expensive.” That’s despite a 90-day reprieve that reduced China’s import obligation to 30%. Products from dozens of other countries face 10% obligations. Walmart imports electronics and toys from China, and imports agricultural products, including Central and South American avocados and bananas.
He said retailers want to lower prices than their competitors, especially when shoppers are looking for discounts. To do that, he says Walmart will absorb some of the high tariff-related costs, and expects suppliers to absorb some higher costs as well.
Rainey said the company will “work with suppliers to keep prices as low as possible.”
Walmart reflected that sentiment when asked to comment on Trump’s post on Saturday.
“We’ve always worked to keep prices as low as possible, but it won’t stop,” Walmart said in a statement. “We’ll keep the reality of retail margins as low as possible, as possible, the prices are as low as possible.”
Walmart is seeing an increasing number of businesses warning that higher prices and higher prices are coming due to tariffs. Microsoft said earlier this month that the recommended retail prices for Xbox video game consoles and some controllers rose.
Barbie Maker Mattel announced earlier this month that it was moving production from China, but it is still expected that toy prices will rise. And last week, Ford warned that prices for some cars would need to be raised.
Walmart maintained its sales forecast for the year on Thursday, but refused to provide revenue or operating profit forecasts for the second quarter, citing frequent changes in the Trump administration’s tariff policy.
Major US retailers, including Target, Home Depot and Lowe, are expected to share their own outlook on the impact of tariffs when reporting results for next week.
Walmart shares rose 2% to $98.24 on Friday.