Target, Walmart Executives to Meet Trump as Tariff Angst Spreads
The Monday meeting includes representatives from Walmart Inc., Home Depot Inc., Lowe's Cos. and Target Corp., according to people familiar with the plans. The discussion comes amid a 90-day pause in Trump's higher tariffs on trading partners except China that dozens of foreign leaders and business executives are using to negotiate better terms.
Home Depot said it works with administrations from 'both sides of the aisle' and that it will keep meeting with leaders at all levels of government. Target had no immediate comment. Lowe's did not respond to a request for comment. Walmart declined to comment.
Disruptions caused in large part by Trump's tariffs have posed challenges for retailers that are a main driver of the US economy. A selloff in US assets deepened Monday amid tariff anxiety and Trump's threats against Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Shares of the companies ticked up after news of the meeting, but all remained down for the day.
American companies have warned that business could slow in the months ahead as the import taxes go into place. While companies have operated with tariffs for several years, the magnitude and fast-changing nature of Trump's levies have become a unique problem.
Trump's duties on nearly all trading partners and a litany of sectors, including metals, are threatening to increase prices on everything from spirits and apparel to electronics and furniture. Those changes are expected to further hamper consumer demand, as Americans have already been price-sensitive following years of inflation.
In addition to the cavalcade of overseas officials seeking lower tariffs, Trump has indicated he would be open to negotiating on rates with corporate leaders.
'We'll also talk to companies. You know, you have to show a certain flexibility. Nobody should be so rigid,' the US president told reporters on April 13.
Uncertainty around Trump's tariffs have made it difficult for businesses to plan inventory and pricing. The 90-day pause has given some operators a temporary relief, though many have warned of the complications that come with not knowing where duty rates will end up.
Americans have been rushing to purchase items like cars, electronics and appliances before Trump's levies take full effect, according to economic data. US retail sales surged 1.4 percent in March from the previous month, the biggest jump in more than two years, according a Commerce Department report. Auto purchases increased by 5.3 percent as buyers sought to avoid 25 percent tariffs on finished vehicles that went into place on April 3.
The March data captured spending before Trump announced, then subsequently paused high tariffs on nations across the world, and before he hiked levies on many Chinese goods to 145 percent. But the report offers insight on consumers' mindset at a time of high uncertainty about future prices. Retailer Warnings
Retailers have an especially close window into how the levies would affect consumers and the US economy, given that they sell many oft-purchased essentials.
Walmart, the world's largest retailer, has said it operates a diversified supply chain and that it sources about two-thirds of items in the US. Executives said this month that the company is working to keep prices low and that its merchants are thinking through the quantity of goods it needs, as well as how prices could change due to tariffs. So far, the company has not seen customers hoard like they did during the coronavirus pandemic.
Target has not indicated how much of its items are sourced overseas, though it has previously said price increases would vary by category. The company has said it was having discussions with vendors and employees about next steps. Home Depot has said it sources more than half of its goods in North America.
By Catherine Lucey, Stephanie Lai, Jaewon Kang and Jenny Leonard
Learn more:
Op-Ed | Target's DEI Flip-Flop Came at a Price
Early data indicates Target and Walmart's store traffic has declined since their DEI exit, while Costco's has grown, signalling that we may be entering a new era of consumer boycotts.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
16 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Senate heads home with no deal to speed confirmations as irate Trump tells Schumer to 'go to hell'
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate is leaving Washington Saturday night for its monthlong August recess without a deal to advance dozens of President Donald Trump's nominees, calling it quits after days of contentious bipartisan negotiations and Donald Trump posting on social media that Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer can 'GO TO HELL!' Without a deal in hand, Republicans say they may try to change Senate rules when they return in September to speed up the pace of confirmations. Trump has been pressuring senators to move quickly as Democrats blocked more nominees than usual this year, denying any fast unanimous consent votes and forcing roll calls on each one, a lengthy process that can take several days per nominee. 'I think they're desperately in need of change," Senate Majority Leader John Thune said of Senate rules Saturday after negotiations with Chuck Schumer and Trump broke down. "I think that the last six months have demonstrated that this process, nominations is broken. And so I expect there will be some good robust conversations about that.' The latest standoff comes as Democrats and Republicans have gradually escalated their obstruction of the other party's executive branch and judicial nominees over the last two decades, and as Senate leaders have incrementally changed Senate rules to speed up confirmations — and make them less bipartisan. In 2013, Democrats changed Senate rules for lower court judicial nominees to remove the 60-vote threshold for confirmations as Republicans blocked President Barack Obama's judicial picks. In 2017, Republicans did the same for Supreme Court nominees as Democrats tried to block Trump's nomination of Justice Neil Gorsuch. Trump has been pressuring Senate Republicans for weeks to cancel the August recess and grind through dozens of his nominations as Democrats have slowed the process. But Republicans hoped to make a deal with Democrats instead, and came close several times over the last few days as the two parties and the White House negotiated over moving a large tranche of nominees in exchange for reversing some of the Trump administration's spending cuts on foreign aid, among other issues. But it was clear that there would be no agreement when Trump attacked Schumer on social media Saturday evening and told them to pack it up and go home. 'Tell Schumer, who is under tremendous political pressure from within his own party, the Radical Left Lunatics, to GO TO HELL!' Trump posted on Truth Social. 'Do not accept the offer, go home and explain to your constituents what bad people the Democrats are, and what a great job the Republicans are doing, and have done, for our Country.' Thune said afterward that there were 'several different times' when the two sides thought they had a deal, but in the end 'we didn't close it out.' It's the first time in recent history that the minority party hasn't allowed at least some quick confirmations. Thune has already kept the Senate in session for more days, and with longer hours, this year to try and confirm as many of Trump's nominees as possible. But Democrats had little desire to give in without the spending cut reversals or some other incentive, even though they too were eager to skip town after several long months of work and bitter partisan fights over legislation. 'We have never seen nominees as flawed, as compromised, as unqualified as we have right now,' Schumer said Saturday.
Yahoo
16 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Our View: Republicans, Democrats scheming on mid-term elections
Two wrongs don't make a right. It's wrong that at the urging of President Trump, Texas Republicans are scheming to redrawn political boundaries to dilute the power of minorities and Democratic voters in next year's mid-term elections. It's wrong that California Democrats, led by Gov. Gavin Newsom, now are scheming to usurp the will of California voters and reshape the state's political boundaries to block Texas Republicans from gaming the congressional elections. For many, this may seem like boring insider political baseball. But the scheming shows how politicians care less about the people they represent at home and more about retaining the power of their political parties — Republican and Democratic — in Washington. The scheming we now see is a shameful corruption of democracy and the electoral system politicians claim they support. At its heart is control of the House of Representatives. The House of Representatives has 435 members — each representing about the same number of constituents. Every 10 years, after completion of a U.S. Census, allocation of a state's share of House seats is decided and the political boundary lines of congressional districts within the states are adjusted. In most states, such as Texas, state politicians and their donor buddies scheme on adjusting district boundary lines to protect incumbents and assure a political party's election. That's called gerrymandering. Texas Republicans are not waiting for the next 10-year census to redraw district lines. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has called the Republican-dominated Legislature back into a special session to consider a new political map that shifts district lines and is designed to elect more Republicans to Congress. If all goes as the schemers hope, Texas Republicans could pick up five additional seats in next year's mid-term elections. That would be a big deal in the House, where Republicans now hold a slim majority. Democratic takeover of the House would apply the brakes on Trump's controversial agenda. And that's where California Gov. Newsom comes in. He's scheming on a plan to fight fire with fire. Redraw California's political boundary lines before next year's mid-term elections to advantage Democratic candidates. That could shrink California's nine-member Republican delegation to three or four. But there is a catch. In 2010, California voters, who were fed up with self-dealing politicians, overwhelmingly passed a ballot measure that created a bipartisan independent redistricting commission. No longer could the state's politicians draw their own district lines. In 2011 and 2021, the commission drew district lines, with a focus on creating competitive districts, within coherent geographic areas, containing voters with shared interests, and providing representations for minority communities. Both Democratic and Republican parties, refusing to quietly give up their power, strongly opposed creation of a bipartisan independent commission in 2010. To accomplish his mid-term scheme, Newsom would have to quickly call a statewide special election — at a cost of what some estimate to be $200 million — and ask voters to return redistricting power to self-serving politicians. Fat chance voters would go along with that. As an alternative, Newsom and his co-conspirators are considering crawling through an imaginary loophole in the law that created the bipartisan independent redistricting commission. They reason that since the law voters created only called for an independent commission to set political district lines after a U.S. Census every 10 years, the Legislature is free to undo the commission's work in the years between — drawing legislators' own self-serving lines. Good luck with that. Let the lawsuits begin! Warning: This threatened gerrymandering war — which could expand to other states — may blow up in both Democratic and Republican party faces. Voters are not as dumb as politicians think they are. They can spot election cheating when they see it. Like it or not, the balance of power in Washington should be decided by voters at the ballot box, not schemers in the backroom. If we believe in the electoral system that is the foundation of our democracy, we must trust voters. California's legislators will return to Sacramento after a summer break in a couple of weeks. Hopefully Democrats then also will return to their good senses.
Yahoo
16 minutes ago
- Yahoo
From president to provocateur: The long journey of Russia's Dmitry Medvedev
Dmitry Medvedev has traveled a long way from his time as Russian president, when he once stood beside then-US President Barack Obama and declared that 'the solution of many world problems depends on the joint will of the United States and Russia.' This week, in his semi-official role as Kremlin attack dog, Medvedev twice suggested that the administration of President Donald Trump was pushing the US and Russia towards war and warned of Russia's nuclear capabilities, after Trump suggested he would apply new sanctions on Russia. While Medvedev is the deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, he wields no executive power. But his provocative comments this week still made a splash. Medvedev said on Telegram Thursday that Trump should picture the apocalyptic television series 'The Walking Dead,' and referred to the Soviet capacity for launching automatic nuclear strikes. The US president responded Friday by ordering two nuclear submarines to move to 'the appropriate regions.' The skirmish comes after Trump set a new deadline for Putin to bring the war in Ukraine to an end, threatening US sanctions if a ceasefire was not agreed upon – an ultimatum that the Kremlin is unlikely to heed. Medvedev cuts a different figure today than when he became Russian president at the age of 42. He was qualified as a lawyer with no connections to the security services, unlike current leader Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent. Comfortable with the internet – again, unlike Putin – he was eager to modernize Russia's economy and tackle corruption. But his presidency was seen as a stop-gap, a way for Putin to side-step constitutional limits and retain power. Since stepping down as president in 2012 to allow Putin to return to the post, Medvedev has transformed himself from a relatively liberal technocrat into an uber-nationalist, taunting Russia's adversaries with provocative social media posts. Just compare what he said in a CNN interview in 2009 – that Russia needed 'to have good, developed relations with the West in all senses of the word,' to this comment in May: 'Regarding Trump's words about Putin 'playing with fire' and 'really bad things' happening to Russia. I only know of one REALLY BAD thing — WWIII. I hope Trump understands this!' That shift appears to have begun following his presidency, when Medvedev began repositioning himself in an effort to retain the confidence of the ruling United Russia party. In 2012, he told lawmakers: 'They often tell me, 'You're a liberal.' I can tell you frankly: I have never had liberal convictions.' As president, Medvedev had told CNN that 'the level of corruption is categorically unacceptable.' But later, when prime minister, he was the target of an investigation by opposition figure Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation that claimed he had amassed a 'corruption empire' of lavish properties, luxury yachts, and vineyards across Russia. Medvedev's spokeswoman, Natalya Timakova, dismissed the investigation, which quickly garnered 14 million views on YouTube, as a 'propagandistic outburst,' but Medvedev became a target of street protests. In 2020, he abruptly resigned as prime minister as Putin embarked on a constitutional overhaul to cement his grip on power. Since then, from his seat on the Security Council, he has launched a stream of xenophobic and offensive attacks on Ukrainians and Western leaders. Medvedev has 1.7 million subscribers on Telegram, as well as Russian and English X accounts with a total of nearly 7 million followers. After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Medvedev referred to Kyiv's leadership as 'cockroaches breeding in a jar.' In a speech earlier this year, Medvedev featured an image depicting Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as Muppets and urged the 'destruction of the Kyiv neo-Nazi regime.' He frequently conjures up the specter of Nazism, saying this year that new German chancellor Friedrich Merz had 'suggested a strike on the Crimean Bridge. Think twice, Nazi!' And he's not afraid of rattling the nuclear saber, saying in 2022 that 'the idea of punishing a country that has one of the largest nuclear capabilities is absurd and potentially poses a threat to the existence of humanity.' Medvedev also rejoices in ad hominem attacks. Last month he taunted Trump with a social media post warning: 'Don't go down the Sleepy Joe road,' a reference to Trump's own description of former President Joe Biden. Despite his outlandish rhetoric, Medvedev has played a calculated role in the Kremlin's messaging, according to analysts. The Institute for the Study of War says he is used to 'amplify inflammatory rhetoric designed to stoke panic and fear among Western decision-makers,' as part of 'a top-down, concerted Kremlin informational strategy.' But commentators say he should not be taken literally. Referring to this week's back and forth, Anatol Lieven at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft described both Medvedev's remarks and Trump's response as 'pure theatrics.' 'Having refrained from the use of nuclear weapons over the past three years, Russia is obviously not going to launch them in response to a new round of US sanctions,' Lieven said. At that news conference with Obama back in 2009, Medvedev was a confident, freshly minted president who saw himself as much more than a placeholder for Putin. He said that day: 'We do have the major nuclear arsenals and we have full responsibility for those arsenals.' Sixteen years later, he has the freedom of the provocateur.
