Trump berates companies for warning about tariff price increases
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 5 hours ago
- 5 min read
By Tony Romm
President Donald Trump is telling some of the nation’s largest companies that they should eat the cost of his tariffs, as a growing number of businesses signal that they must raise prices to blunt the impact of a persistent global trade war.
As a result, the man who ran for the presidency by boasting about his business acumen is now openly sparring with corporate America, seeking to dictate how Walmart, Mattel and other retailers and manufacturers respond to some of the highest levies seen in decades.
Since the spring, the United States has imposed a 10% tariff on nearly every nation, with steeper duties reserved for specific products and countries, including a minimum 30% tax on Chinese imports.
While the White House insists the president’s strategy is working — generating new revenue and forcing nations to negotiate — some companies have started to report early signs of financial strain. Their warnings have affirmed economists’ long and widely held belief that tariffs fall hardest on U.S. companies and consumers, not the allies and adversaries that Trump seeks to punish.
But the White House repeatedly has dismissed this evidence, while the president himself has increasingly needled companies for trying to ameliorate the financial fallout.
“He maintains the position that foreign countries absorb these tariffs,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters at a briefing Monday.
The latest example arrived over the weekend when Trump trained his ire on Walmart, just days after the low-cost retailer told investors that it might have to increase prices soon. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said on the company’s latest earnings call last week that it probably would not be able to “absorb all the pressure” from the president’s tariffs for much longer.
In response, the president demanded in a post on social media on Saturday that Walmart “EAT THE TARIFFS,” rather than pass any new costs on to customers. He argued that Walmart had generated billions of dollars in profit last year, so it could afford to shoulder any added expenses.
“I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!!!” Trump said.
Asked Sunday about the president’s strategy, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Walmart would, in fact, “eat some of the tariffs,” noting that he had spoken with McMillon over the weekend.
“We have always worked to keep our prices as low as possible, and we won’t stop,” Molly Blakeman, a spokesperson for Walmart, said in a statement. “We’ll keep prices as low as we can for as long as we can given the reality of small retail margins.”
Company warnings again underscored the economic risks in Trump’s aggressive approach to trade, as he seeks to use sky-high tariffs to recalibrate U.S. relationships, raise billions of dollars in revenue and boost domestic manufacturing.
So far, the administration has completed an early framework for an agreement with Britain, and it has worked with China to mutually lower the punishing tit-for-tat tariffs that essentially halted trade between the world’s largest economies.
But the White House remains far from realizing its vision for dozens of individual trade deals, and Trump has threatened repeatedly to restore the much larger “reciprocal” tariffs that he announced in early April. Those levies were suspended for 90 days to give other nations time to reach trade deals with the United States.
The longer it takes to reach those deals, the greater the odds that Trump’s trade war could weigh down the U.S. economy. On Monday, financial markets tumbled anew amid concerns about the president’s agenda and its effects on the country’s fiscal future.
For now, consumer prices have remained mostly steady, cooling slightly in April in what may prove to be a final lull before the trade war begins to contribute to inflation. Kush Desai, a White House spokesperson, pointed to that data in a statement Monday, stressing that the administration’s policies are working. He said the United States “has the leverage to make our trading partners ultimately bear the cost of tariffs.”
“There’s some uncertainty. We’re going to watch it very, very closely about how this ends over the next two or three months when the tariff rates get set,” Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, told reporters Monday. He said any tariff-related price increases, if they occurred, were not a sign of inflation but a “one-time” effect.
Some of the earliest fallout could arise in the retail sector, where companies including Lowe’s and Home Depot will report their latest earnings this week. Facing tight margins, many in the industry have expressed fear that elevated import costs could cause them to raise prices on consumers, a message they have shared privately with Trump since he announced his tariffs.
Publicly, the White House has blasted companies for trying to tie price increases to tariffs.
When a disputed report surfaced in April that Amazon would begin displaying tariff-related costs on its widely popular marketplace, the Trump administration accused the e-commerce giant of a “hostile and political” act. Trump later spoke with Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and the company denied that the policy was going into effect.
The next month, the president took aim at Mattel, which had warned that it might raise the price of its popular toys, including Barbies, as a result of tariffs. Trump threatened to impose a 100% tariff on Mattel’s products, saying it “won’t sell one toy in the United States.”
The president previously dismissed concerns about higher toy costs. He mused at one point that “children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls,” and that dolls might “cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.”
Trump also turned his attention to Ford Motor when it appeared poised to raise prices on some vehicles on the heels of a report to investors showing it would face $1.5 billion in tariff costs this year. He nonetheless shrugged off the automaker’s plans, describing them as a negotiating tactic — and predicted that it “wouldn’t sell any cars” as a result.
“Tariffs are the most misunderstood thing maybe in any form of business,” Trump said at a White House event this month in response to a question about the public’s patience for price increases.
But he maintained that those costs would not fall on to consumers. “Oftentimes, the country picks them up. Oftentimes, the company picks it up,” Trump continued. “The people don’t pick it up, OK? The people don’t pick it up.”