The US retail giant Walmart will “eat some of the tariffs” in line with Donald Trump’s demands, the president’s treasury secretary Scott Bessent insisted on Sunday, claiming he received the assurance in a personal phone call with the company’s chief executive, Doug McMillon.
A spokesperson for Walmart said the company would not comment on conversations between its executives and administration officials.
The statement provoked an angry response from Trump, who posted a rant to his Truth Social network on Saturday saying the company should “eat the tariffs and not charge valued customers anything”.
According to Bessent, speaking on Sunday to NBC’s Meet the Press, Walmart is now promising exactly that.
Trump announced plans for an unprecedented barrage of tariffs against numerous countries on 2 April, a date he called “liberation day”.
In a personal phone conversation with Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, Scott Bessent, the president’s treasury secretary, insisted on Sunday that the US retail behemoth will “eat some of the tariffs” in accordance with Trump’s demands.
Walmart would not comment on talks between its executives and administration officials, according to a Walmart spokesperson. The phone call between Bessent and McMillon, according to a source with knowledge of the exchange, was scheduled several days before Trump’s post, and the company’s stance remained unchanged.
Due to its inability to absorb the cost of the president’s international trade tariffs, which have caused chaos in global markets, Walmart announced this week that it had no choice but to raise prices for customers starting later this month.
Trump responded angrily to the statement, posting a tirade on his Truth Social network on Saturday, which called for the company to “eat the tariffs and not charge valued customers anything.”.
Bessent claims that Walmart is now making just that promise in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday.
Yesterday, I spoke with Walmart CEO Doug McMillon over the phone. After host Kristen Welker questioned whether the president was requesting that American businesses be less profitable, Bessent responded, “And Walmart is, in fact, going to, as you describe it, eat some of the tariffs, just as they did in ’18, ’19, and ’20.”.
“You’re talking about Walmart’s earnings call. Additionally, in order to avoid being sued, businesses must provide the worst-case scenario. “”.
Even though the president’s administration announced a pause in its trade war with China, which analysts dubbed “capitulation day,” McMillon stated during the earnings call on Thursday that his company, a barometer of US consumer health, was taking steps to safeguard itself against the effects of Trump’s tariffs.
Although we will make every effort to maintain our prices as low as possible, he stated that given the size of the tariffs and the reality of narrow retail margins, even at the lower levels announced this week, we are unable to withstand all the pressure.
Walmart, which operates thousands of stores throughout the United States, is “wired for everyday low prices,” according to John Rainey, the company’s chief financial officer, who spoke to CNBC. However, he claimed that the tariffs were “more than any retailer can absorb” and that in late May and early June, consumers would start to notice higher prices.
On April 2, dubbed “liberation day,” Trump declared plans to impose an unprecedented slew of tariffs on a number of nations.
He claimed that the US had been “looted, pillaged, raped, and plundered by nations near and far” for far too long. He then gave a list of nations and territories that would be subject to tariffs, which included everything from a number of US allies and long-standing trading partners to secluded, desolate islands near Antarctica that were only inhabited by penguins.
The president’s plan, which he maintained would result in talks and trade agreements with at least 150 nations, was criticized and derided in a variety of ways as being wrong and unrealistic. Additionally, it caused a six-week period of unrest that included rising prices, stock market crashes, and a slowdown in economic expansion.
Several of the policy’s excesses have since been retracted by him, such as this week’s announcement that tariffs on China, a major supplier to Walmart and numerous other US companies, would be reduced from 145 percent to 30 percent for a 90-day initial period.
After referring to it as a “total reset” in trade relations, the White House announced on Friday that it would unilaterally impose new tariff rates rather than engage in negotiations with many of the nations.
During his tour of Gulf states, Trump told a gathering of business leaders in the United Arab Emirates that “[it is] not possible to meet the number of people that want to see us.”.
“You can’t see that many countries, but we have 150 countries that want to make a deal. “”.
In a later appearance on Sunday, Bessent told CNN’s State of the Union that the United States was concentrating on its “18 most important trading relationships” and that he anticipated regional deals to result from ongoing trade negotiations with several nations.
