Walmart leaning into tariff uncertainty: 'Positioned to play offense'
Executives of the largest private employer in the U.S. are still confident in the business despite growing concerns from the business community around tariffs.
Walmart executives told investors Wednesday that their confidence hasn't been rocked by President Trump's escalating trade war, despite the levies impacting the retailer's significant trading partners.
"I want you to know how confident I remain in our company. I've seen us navigate times like the period after 9/11, the global financial crisis, the pandemic, and more recently, high inflation," Walmart CEO Doug McMillon told a room full of investors and journalists in Dallas.
McMillon acknowledged that the company is not immune to some of the effects in the short term but that it's "positioned to play offense."
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"Nothing about the current environment impacts our confidence in our business or our strategy. The changes we're making add even more strength and flexibility for our future," he said.
The company's head of finance, John David Rainey, reiterated his sentiment, saying that the company sees "opportunities to accelerate share gains and are more maintaining flexibility to invest in price as tariffs are applied to incoming goods."
President Donald Trump has already implemented baseline tariffs — which are taxes on imported goods — of 10% on all imports to the U.S. That took effect last week. But the administration has slapped on tariffs for specific countries with higher tariffs in place on American goods.
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Nearly two-thirds of Walmart U.S. spending goes toward products made, assembled, or grown in the U.S., but the remaining third comes from around the world, with China and Mexico being the largest contributors.
The company has long warned that the tariffs are going to pump up prices for consumers, with Rainey telling FOX Business late last year that the levies "are going to be inflationary."
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In February, Rainey told Fox Business Digital that the company was going to try and get its suppliers to absorb some of the impact, diversify its supply and lean into its private brands.
The company is still in discussions with its suppliers to lower prices, but there is no overall request for a specific price reduction. Instead, Walmart negotiates price changes based on product categories, rather than by country of origin.
The administration has argued that tariffs could serve several purposes, such as increasing federal tax revenue to offset other tax cuts, encouraging the reshoring of manufacturing, or as a negotiating tool to reduce tariffs among U.S. trading partners.
Those goals are contradictory in some respects: Tariffs that are imposed and later removed through negotiations resulting in lower trade barriers generate less tax revenue and remove the incentive for reshoring. Similarly, if companies move operations to the U.S. to avoid tariffs, the government would collect less tax revenue.
FOX Business' Eric Revell contributed to this report.
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