President Trump scolded Walmart on Saturday after the retail giant warned that his tariffs would force it to raise prices, writing on social media that the discount chain could afford to absorb the costs of the new import taxes without passing them on to customers.
“Walmart should STOP trying to blame Tariffs as the reason for raising prices throughout the chain,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social, his social media site. “Walmart made BILLIONS OF DOLLARS last year, far more than expected.”
He called on Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, to “EAT THE TARIFFS” and keep prices down. “I’ll be watching, and so will your customers,” he wrote.
Mr. Trump’s attempt to bully Walmart into keeping its prices steady came as the president, who campaigned on a pledge to prevent inflation, is working to keep his tumultuous trade policy from driving up prices.
Walmart, which sells a broad selection of affordable goods to millions of Americans, said on Thursday that Mr. Trump’s tariffs, even at their recently reduced levels, would soon force it to start raising prices.
“We will do our best to keep our prices as low as possible,” Walmart’s chief executive, Doug McMillon, said on a call with analysts. But he cautioned that the company would not be able to “absorb all the pressure” imposed by the tariffs.
A spokeswoman for Walmart, which is based in Arkansas and has more than 4,000 stores in the United States, repeated on Saturday that the company would do its best to keep its prices from rising.
“We have always worked to keep our prices as low as possible and we won’t stop,” the spokeswoman, Molly Blakeman, said in a statement after Mr. Trump’s post. “We’ll keep prices as low as we can for as long as we can given the reality of small retail margins.”
The company, which says it counts 90 percent of Americans as its customers, has refrained from projecting profits for its current quarter because of the tariffs. It has said its sales climbed by more than 3 percent, to $112 billion, in the most recent quarter, which ended last month, and it has projected that its revenue would grow by 3 to 4 percent this year.
About a third of Walmart’s products come from abroad, John David Rainey, the company’s chief financial officer, has said. A large share of the imported products come from China and Mexico.
Many retailers have held off raising prices by stockpiling goods. Walmart is considered to be more insulated from the tariffs than some retailers because many of its groceries are sourced in the United States.
It is just one of several companies that have said they will be forced to pass on the costs of tariffs to consumers.
Ryan Sweet, the chief U.S. economist at the advisory firm Oxford Economics, said on Saturday that it was no surprise that the tariffs would begin to drive prices up, adding that businesses were never “going to eat all” the costs. They must choose between lifting prices and laying off workers, he said.
“It was the iceberg that we knew we were going to hit at some point,” Mr. Sweet said, adding, “This is just the beginning.”
Grocery stores, in particular, will struggle to hold their prices given their “razor-thin” margins, he added.
After threatening an all-out trade war with China earlier this year, Mr. Trump backed away last Monday, at least temporarily, from imposing the most crushing tariffs on China.
But much of the trade between China and the United States, the world’s two largest economies, had been brought to a halt because of the tariffs.
At one point, Mr. Trump imposed a 145 percent tariff on Chinese imports, prompting Beijing to respond with a 125 percent tariff on American goods. On Monday, the countries reached a 90-day agreement that lowered America’s tariff on Chinese products to 30 percent and China’s on American goods to 10 percent.
In recent days, Mr. Trump has sought a dialogue with President Xi Jinping of China to reach a trade deal. The president said in an interview with Fox News aired on Friday that he was open to visiting China to meet with the Chinese leader.
Mr. Trump has imposed a minimum 10 percent tariff on many countries around the globe. In April, he postponed for three months a suite of tariffs on dozens of countries that had rattled investors and driven fears of an impending recession. But he did not back off on the tariffs on China until last Monday.
Mr. Trump has complained for decades that other countries have ripped off the United States in trade, and he has offered various justifications for his tariffs, which he imposed on adversaries and allies alike.
By placing tariffs on Canada and Mexico, he said, he was trying to force the countries to prevent unauthorized immigrants and drugs from entering the United States.
In the Fox News interview, Mr. Trump, who fashions himself a master deal-maker, said he had far-reaching ambitions for his global trade policy.
“I’m using trade to settle scores and to make peace,” Mr. Trump said.
Danielle Kaye contributed reporting.
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