Walmart has signaled price hikes should be expected if President-elect Donald Trump makes good on his plan to implement a broad tariff regime.
The retailer’s CFO John David Rainey said the company would likely have to raise its prices, which is against its model and wishes.
“We never want to raise prices,” he told CNBC. “Our model is everyday low prices. But there probably will be cases where prices will go up for consumers.”
Rainey added that it’s too early to determine which products could cost more due to the tariffs.
Rainey said the majority of Walmart’s products wouldn’t be affected by tariffs as two-thirds of the company’s inventory comes from the United States. When Trump imposed levies during his first administration, it shocked retailers in a similar way, making their adjustments reminiscent of seven years ago.
“We’ve been living under a tariff environment for seven years, so we’re pretty familiar with that,” he said. “Tariffs, though, are inflationary for customers, so we want to work with suppliers and with our own private brand assortment to try to bring down prices.”
Walmart is the latest retailer to warn of the effect of tariffs. Throughout his presidential campaign, Trump has said he would impose a 10% to 20% tariff on all imports, with some countries such as China’s and Mexico’s goods seeing tariffs as high as 60% to 100% — and even 200%.
Companies such as Lowe’s, e.l.f. Beauty, and Steve Madden have also been outspoken regarding the effect that the tariffs would have. Tarang Amin, e.l.f. Beauty’s CEO, said the company may have to raise prices if higher tariffs take effect.
Steve Madden CFO Edward Rosenfeld told CNBC the brand has been “planning for a potential scenario in which we would have to move goods out of China more quickly.”
“We currently source a little bit more than 70% of those goods from China,” he said. “Our goal over the next year is to reduce that percentage of goods that we sourced from China by approximately 40% to 45%, which means that if we’re able to achieve that and we think we have the plan to do it, that a year from today, we would be looking at just over a quarter of our business that would be subject to potential tariffs on Chinese goods.”
Walmart has also been attempting to diversify its imports to avoid relying so much on China, and Lowe’s has begun to do the same to avoid the harshest effects of Trump’s tariffs.
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Lowe’s CFO Brandon Sink said tariffs “certainly would add product costs” but added that the “timing and details remain uncertain at this point.”
“We believe we’re well prepared to respond when and if it does happen,” he said.
