{"id":2095,"date":"2025-03-17T11:00:06","date_gmt":"2025-03-17T15:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/?p=2095"},"modified":"2025-03-17T10:59:24","modified_gmt":"2025-03-17T14:59:24","slug":"walmart-makes-massive-move-to-cut-prices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/walmart-makes-massive-move-to-cut-prices\/","title":{"rendered":"Walmart is making a massive move to cut prices \u2013 and what it means for shoppers could be huge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whilst one of the main intentions behind President Donald Trump’s decision to implement a significant raise in tariff fees on all goods entering the United States from Mexico, Canada, and China was to promote the purchasing of local goods — the short-term applications have already proven to be a huge problem for consumers and retailers alike.<\/p>\n

It is near impossible to transition operations to American soil in such a short period whilst maintaining the same level of quality and pricing and as such, consumers are now facing price increases across most, if not all, departments in the coming days.<\/p>\n

Walmart<\/a>, the popular big box retailer seems to have a plan to aid this issue without having its customers bear the brunt of this tariff trouble, however.<\/p>\n

Walmart tries to resolve tariff related cost issue<\/h2>\n

The supermarket giant has allegedly been in talks with its Chinese suppliers with the hopes of having them cut costs by 10% so as to help curb the impending price hikes. Walmart is one of the top earners in the retail sector globally and the retailer is now at odds with its Chinese suppliers after making the request for the suppliers to absorb the increased tariffs implemented by Trump.<\/p>\n

This request was not well received and Beijing even threatened the retailer in response to being asked to cut down its prices so as to offset any impact related to tariff hikes. According to\u00a0Bloomberg,\u00a0<\/em>“Chinese officials met with Walmart, which also operates its warehouse club chain, Sam\u2019s Club, in China, to discuss the retailer\u2019s request that suppliers absorb the tariffs. Walmart reportedly asked some of its Chinese suppliers to reduce their prices by 10%.”<\/p>\n

According to the Wall Street Journal, an implied threat was issued by officials. On social media, China Central Television made a post that read as follows, “if Walmart insists on having suppliers cut prices, then what awaits Walmart is not just talk.”<\/p>\n

Another problem facing the country is the trafficking of fentanyl and in order to aid this matter, Trump imposed a new 20% tariff on top of the tariff already faced by Beijing. In a recent address, the president defended this potentially risky decision.<\/p>\n

“China\u2019s average tariff on our products is twice what we charge them,” Trump stated.<\/p>\n

Additionally, “Walmart representatives said they would work with Chinese suppliers to find ways to avoid damaging the interests of the parties involved,” The Wall Street Journal cited individuals close to the matter.<\/p>\n

Company relations with China<\/h2>\n

The company has been trying to reduce its reliance on suppliers based in China for some time now, much prior to all these recent tariff developments. These efforts go as far back as 2023 and according to an estimate determined by\u00a0Reuters,\u00a0<\/em>“60% of Walmart\u2019s imports from January to August 2023 came from China, down from 80% in 2018.” Reportedly, to make up for this change, the supermarket chain increased the number of goods imported from India.<\/p>\n

John David Rainey, CFO of Walmart, stated in an earnings call last month that these hiked up Trump tariffs are “unpredictable,” however, he asserted that the company “can navigate that very well.”<\/p>\n

Additionally, Rainey showed some concern regarding the effects these tariffs will have on the average consumer. In recent weeks, the company — along with many other peers in the sector — has been warning customers that price hikes are inevitable until these issues are resolved and cost are regulated again.<\/p>\n

It remains to be seen if the retailer will now make the decision to absorb the extra costs within the company in order to save its customers from price hikes now that the suppliers have made their stance on the matter quite clear. However, the likelihood of that is not particularly high.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whilst one of the main intentions behind President Donald Trump’s decision to implement a significant raise in tariff fees on all goods entering the United States from Mexico, Canada, and China was to promote the purchasing of local goods — the short-term applications have already proven to be a huge problem for consumers and retailers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2111,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":"","format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"hide","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"custom","post_date_format_custom":"m\/d\/Y H:i","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"0","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"no-crop","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-715"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[11],"class_list":["post-2095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-retailers","tag-walmart"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gcn.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}