US retail giant Walmart “eats some of the tariffs” in line with Donald Trump’s demands, president’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bescent claimed Sunday, claiming that he received a guarantee on a personal call with the company’s chief executive, Doug McMillon.
A Walmart spokesman said the company would not comment on the conversations between executives and management. However, sources familiar with the conversation said the phone call between Bescent and McMillon was placed days before Trump’s post and that the company’s position had not changed.
Walmart said this week there is no alternative to raising consumer prices later this month as it failed to absorb the president’s tariff costs on international trade that caused disruption in international markets.
The statement sparked an angry response from Trump who posted a rumour on his true social network on Saturday.
Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Walmart promises exactly that.
“I was on the phone yesterday with Walmart CEO Doug McMillon. In fact, Walmart eats some of the tariffs, like you’re describing it, like ’18, ’19, and ’20,” Bescent said after host Kristen Welker asked if the president asked the American company not too useful.
“What you’re describing is a revenue call for Walmart. Other things businesses have to do – they have to give them the worst case scenario so they don’t get sued.”
On Thursday, MacMillon said in a revenue call that his company, the home of U.S. consumer health, is moving to protect against the effects of Trump’s tariffs, despite the president’s administration’s suspension in a trade war with China called “Suzuma Day.”
“We will do our best to keep prices as low as possible, but given the magnitude of the tariffs, even the levels of decline announced this week cannot absorb all the pressure given the reality of narrow retail margins,” he said.
Walmart Chief Financial Officer John Rainey told CNBC that the company with thousands of U.S. stores is “wired for everyday low prices.” However, he said the tariffs are “more than any retailer can absorb.” And consumers began seeing higher prices towards the end of May, saying, “It’s certainly more in June.”
Trump announced plans for an unprecedented barrage of tariffs on many countries on April 2, a date called “liberation date.”
For a long time, the United States was “populated, plundered, raped, plundered, plundered by nearby countries,” he says, and he presented a list of countries and territories that receive tariffs, ranging from many US allies and longtime trading partners to isolated islands near Antarctica, occupied solely by penguins.
The president’s strategy he claimed would lead to negotiations and trade deals with at least 150 countries was variously ridiculed, accused of flawed and infeasible. And it created six weeks of disruption with high prices, stock markets crashing and slowing economic growth.
He then sought to roam policy oversized over the week, including this week’s announcement that tariffs in China, the dominant supplier of Walmart and countless other US companies, will be reduced from 145% to 30%.
The White House called it a “complete reset” of trade relations and followed up on Friday to announce that, after all, it’s imposing a new tariff rate instead of negotiating with many countries.
“(() we can’t meet the number of people we want to see,” Trump told a meeting of UAE business leaders during a tour of the Gulf countries.
“We want 150 countries to trade, but we don’t see many.”
Bessent told CNN’s alliance in its later appearance on Sunday that the US is focusing on “the 18 most important trading relationships” and hopes that trade talks with many countries will lead to a series of regional deals.