US treasury secretary says Walmart will ‘eat some of the tariffs’ after Trump demand

The US retail giant Walmart will “eat some of the tariffs” in line with Donald Trump’s demands, the president’s treasury secretary Scott Bessent insisted on Sunday, claiming he received the assurance in a personal phone call with the company’s chief executive, Doug McMillon.

A spokesperson for Walmart said the company would not comment on conversations between its executives and administration officials. However, a source familiar with the conversation said the phone call between Bessent and McMillon was arranged many days prior to Trump’s post – and that the company’s position had not changed.

Walmart said this week it had no alternative to raising prices for consumers beginning later this month because it could not absorb the cost of the president’s tariffs on international trade, which have caused turmoil in international markets.

The statement provoked an angry response from Trump, who posted a rant to his Truth Social network on Saturday saying the company should “eat the tariffs and not charge valued customers anything”.

According to Bessent, speaking on Sunday to NBC’s Meet the Press, Walmart is now promising exactly that.

“I was on the phone with Doug McMillon, the CEO of Walmart, yesterday. And Walmart is, in fact, going to, as you describe it, eat some of the tariffs, just as they did in ‘18, ‘19, and ‘20,” Bessent said after host Kristen Welker asked if the president was asking American companies to be less profitable.

“What you’re describing was Walmart’s earnings call. The other thing the companies have to do – they have to give the worst case scenario so that they’re not sued.”

On Thursday, McMillon said in the earnings call that his company, a bellwether of US consumer health, was moving to protect itself against the impacts of Trump’s tariffs, despite the president’s administration announcing a pause in its trade war with China that analysts called “capitulation day”.

“We will do our best to keep our prices as low as possible 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,” he said.

Walmart’s chief financial officer, John Rainey, told CNBC that the company, which has thousands of stores across the US, was “wired for everyday low prices”. But he said the tariffs were “more than any retailer can absorb” – and that consumers would begin to see higher prices towards the end of May and “certainly much more in June”.

Trump announced plans for an unprecedented barrage of tariffs against numerous countries on 2 April, a date he called “liberation day”.

For too long, he said, the US had been “looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far”, and he presented a list of countries and territories that would receive tariffs, ranging from numerous US allies and longtime trade partners to barren, remote islands near Antarctica occupied only by penguins.

The president’s strategy, which he insisted would lead to negotiations and trade deals with at least 150 countries, was variously ridiculed and condemned as flawed and unworkable. And it created an ongoing six weeks of chaos with higher prices, crashing stock markets and slowing economic growth.

He has since attempted to walk back many of the excesses of the policy, including this week’s announcement that, for an initial 90-day period, tariffs on China – a dominant supplier to Walmart and myriad other US companies – would be cut from 145% to 30%.

The White House called it a “total reset” in trade relations and followed up on Friday by announcing that it would not, after all, negotiate with many of the countries, but instead unilaterally impose new tariff rates.

“[It is] not possible to meet the number of people that want to see us,” Trump told a meeting of business leaders in the United Arab Emirates during his tour of Gulf states.

“We have 150 countries that want to make a deal, but you’re not able to see that many countries.”

Bessent told CNN’s State of the Union in a later appearance on Sunday that the US was focused on its “18 most important trading relationships” – and that he expected trade talks to continue with a number of countries leading to a series of regional deals.