Walmart expanded profit margins and could likely absorb any tariff impacts, former Walmart CEO Bill Simon seemed to suggest, as polling shows that some U.S. consumers — particularly swing voters — are worried companies will use tariffs as an excuse to rip off consumers.
Simon made the remark during an appearance on CNBC on Thursday, as host Melissa Lee remarked, “Ninety percent of Americans are customers of Walmart. Should we expect price increases?”
“Because you say that Walmart really theoretically should be able to absorb a lot of the cost of the tariffs. Why is it announcing price increases?” she asked.
“Well, I think they’ll probably raise prices episodically on certain items,” Simon responded, noting that Walmart actually grew its gross profit margin this quarter.
“But you look down deep and dig into the details of their of their earnings release today, you know, this quarter, they grew their gross profit margin in the U.S. business twenty five basis points. So they’re expanding their margin,” he revealed.
“They also reported their general merchandise categories were flattish because they had mid single digit price deflation. So all that product that has the tariffs on it, they reported last quarter actually went down in price,” he said.
“So that sort of gives them room, in my view, to manage any tariff impact that they would have. And I think they’re really, really effective at doing that,” he added.
The appearance follows the remark made by current company CEO Doug McMillon, who said during an earnings call this week, “The higher tariffs will result in higher prices.”
“But given the magnitude of the tariffs, even at the reduced levels announced this week, we aren’t able to absorb all the pressure given the reality of narrow retail margins,” McMillon stated.
This suggestion coincides with polling showing that swing voters, particularly, are worried that retailers will use Trump tariffs as an excuse to rip consumers off.
The results came from a Protecting America Initiative (PAI) survey:
Further, the survey found that swing district voters believe that retailers engaged in price gouging during the coronavirus pandemic, and they fear they will exploit the tariffs to do so again.
The survey presented the following to respondents: “Retailers exploited the COIVD pandemic to make record profits and they never brought prices back down. Now they’re going to use tariffs as their next excuse to rip off the American people.”
Three-quarters of those surveyed agreed with that statement, and of those, 50 percent “strongly” agreed.
As Breitbart News has extensively detailed, the warnings over increased prices due to tariffs follow an overall positive economic report in April.
“Headline inflation came in at just 0.2 percent for the month. Core inflation—excluding food and energy—also ticked up just 0.2 percent. Year-over-year, the all-items index slowed to 2.3 percent, the lowest reading since February 2021,” Breitbart News’s Economics Editor John Carney reported, putting it this way: “Tariff Inflation Is Everywhere…Except in Consumer Prices.”
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