A Walmart executive warned that President-elect Donald Trump's plan to raise import tariffs could cause the retail giant to raise prices on goods in its stores.
“We never want to raise prices,” said John David Rainey, the company's chief financial officer. Interview with CNBC on tuesday. “Our model is everyday low prices, but there will be times when prices will go up for consumers.”
President Trump has proposed imposing tariffs of 10% to 20% on all imports, and at least 60% on imports from China. Republicans generally support him on the economic front, agreeing that the U.S. should “reset our economic relationship with China.”
The company is reported Two-thirds of the products sold at Walmart in the U.S. and 93 percent of the products sold at Walmart in Mexico are “manufactured, grown, and assembled domestically.” This arose from something Initiatives in 2021 A $350 billion effort to invest in homegrown products.
Rainey said he thinks Walmart will work to avoid being hurt by President Trump's proposed policies.
“We've lived in a tariff environment for seven years, so we know a lot about it,” he told CNBC. “However, tariffs are inflationary for our customers, so we want to work with our suppliers and our own private label assortment to bring prices down.”
