President Donald Trump met April 21 with the top executives from three of the nation’s largest retailers – Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, Target CEO Brian Cornell and Home Depot CEO Ted Decker – at the White House to discuss how his global tariff plans could impact their import-reliant businesses, report a variety of sources, including CNBC. The meeting, first reported by Bloomberg earlier in the day, was not included on the president’s public schedule. (Lowe’s was reportedly also invited to the session, but was not represented at it.)
In a statement provided to CNBC after the session, Trump said that it “went very well.” Similarly, in the aftermath of the meeting, the executives’ companies issued nearly identical statements, calling the session “productive” and thanking the president for hearing their views. But no specific actions resulting from the meeting were announced.
For retailers, CNBC notes, tariffs are the latest threat to an already challenging economic landscape, where consumers are looking for low prices after years of high inflation.
Yet tariffs will weigh heavier on some retailers than others. As the nation’s largest grocer, Walmart, is in a better position than many of its competitors, the news service notes, with about two-thirds of what it sells in the United States is made, grown or assembled in America, chief financial officer John David Rainey said earlier this month at an investor event in Dallas.
Target, by contrast, mainly sells a lot of so-called discretionary merchandise like inexpensive, chic clothes and home goods, products that are typically manufactured overseas, CNBC noted. Click here for more from its report.