Walmart is the latest company to warn consumers that a price hike may be incoming.
Walmart CFO John David Rainey said on Tuesday that President-elect Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff plan may require the retailer to raise prices on some of its products.
“We never want to raise prices,” he told CNBC. “Our model is everyday low prices.” However, he warned, “there probably will be cases where prices will go up for consumers.”
About two-thirds of Walmart’s products are sourced within the U.S., and the corporate mega-giant has been searching to expand its suppliers of imported goods since the last Trump presidency, Rainey said.
Walmart U.S. made nearly 60% of its revenue from groceries last year, whereas only about a quarter of sales came from general merchandise.
“We’ve been living under a tariff environment for seven years, so we’re pretty familiar with that,” he added. “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.”
The company did not discuss tariffs during its third-quarter earnings call Tuesday.
The last time tariffs were mentioned on an earnings call was in 2019 during Trump’s first term.
At the time, the company said it would try to avert raising food prices by managing costs elsewhere. Rainey added on the Tuesday earnings call that general merchandise products are also marked up higher than groceries, which suggests the company can potentially manipulate how costs are passed along to customers.
