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Walmart has warned that it may have to raise prices if President-elect Donald Trump moves forward with his tariffs plan.

“We never want to raise prices — our model is everyday low prices — but there probably will be cases where prices will go up for consumers,” Walmart CFO John David Rainey told CNBC on Tuesday.

The good news is that most of Walmart’s products aren’t at risk, since two-thirds of them are made, grown, or assembled here in the United States. Plus, Walmart already has experience with tariffs courtesy of the levies that Trump imposed during his first term in office.

“We’ve been living under a tariff environment for seven years, so we’re pretty familiar with that,” Rainey said. “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.”

Some critics responded to all this by wondering why Walmart doesn’t just produce all its products in the United States.

Look:

Lowe’s, a major hardware company, has issued a similar warning.

During an earnings call listened to by CNBC, Lowe’s CFO Brandon Sink reportedly said 40 percent of the company’s cost of goods sold originates outside the U.S., meaning tariffs “certainly would add product costs.”

In an interview with CNBC, CEO Marvin Ellison said outright that the company is worried about consumers facing higher prices.

“He said it’s already having conversations with suppliers about the ‘what ifs of tariffs,’ as it waits to see what Trump’s policy change will ultimately look like,” CNBC notes.

“We’re not waiting to act,” he asserted. “We’ve got plans in place. We’ve got scenarios in place, and we’re trying to understand the implications.”

Then there’s Autozone. The company’s CEO, Philip Daniele, said during an earnings call in September that his company will simply pass the cost of any tariffs “back to the consumer.”

Meanwhile, a study by the National Retail Federation published earlier this month found that Trump’s tariffs would have “a significant and detrimental impact on the costs of a wide range of consumer products sold in the United States.”

In a statement, NRF CEO Matthew Shay described the tariffs as “a tax on American families” and warned they “will drive inflation and price increases and will result in job losses.”

“Consumers would pay $13.9 billion to $24 billion more for apparel; $8.8 billion to $14.2 billion more for toys; $8.5 billion to $13.1 billion more for furniture; $6.4 billion to $10.9 billion more for household appliances; $6.4 billion to $10.7 billion more for footwear, and $2.2 billion to $3.9 billion more for travel goods,” according to NRF.

Responding to all this, critics made a few points. One, tariffs are meant to be temporary, not permanent. Two, the “experts” were dead wrong about the inflation crisis under the Biden-Harris administration.

See more below:

Vivek Saxena
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