This is such a weird and obvious denial of reality. Walmart doesn’t have 30% margins on everything. Does Trump think he can get people to blame Walmart for price increases instead of himself? The Trump crowd loves Walmart.
It can only be a way to offset the blame and make it out to not be his fault.
Even if Walmart and other retailers were to eat the tarrifs, their profits margins would drop, which knocks their share price, which overall affects the entire US market.
Once upon a time, regular workers had pensions not tied to market casinos for rich people. Apparently that’s another lesson forgotten after 80-100 years. I guess the owner class thought 401k would prevent a repeat of 1929, if poor and middle class had a direct interest tied to the market.
Obviously this entire situation is insane from many perspectives, but strictly speaking, it’d be 30% added to the cost of acquiring merchandise, rather than the overall margin. The price of goods is a small fraction of Walmart’s overall expenses, compared to logistics and freight, labor, real estate, shrink and such. The actual impact to margins is probably more like 10% or so. Which is simultaneously both something Walmart could probably eat, and more than the Walton family is willing to swallow.
This is such a weird and obvious denial of reality. Walmart doesn’t have 30% margins on everything. Does Trump think he can get people to blame Walmart for price increases instead of himself? The Trump crowd loves Walmart.
It can only be a way to offset the blame and make it out to not be his fault.
Even if Walmart and other retailers were to eat the tarrifs, their profits margins would drop, which knocks their share price, which overall affects the entire US market.
Once upon a time, regular workers had pensions not tied to market casinos for rich people. Apparently that’s another lesson forgotten after 80-100 years. I guess the owner class thought 401k would prevent a repeat of 1929, if poor and middle class had a direct interest tied to the market.
Their profit margins would go negative. A profit margin of 10% is outstanding in business, but the tariffs wreck that.
Obviously this entire situation is insane from many perspectives, but strictly speaking, it’d be 30% added to the cost of acquiring merchandise, rather than the overall margin. The price of goods is a small fraction of Walmart’s overall expenses, compared to logistics and freight, labor, real estate, shrink and such. The actual impact to margins is probably more like 10% or so. Which is simultaneously both something Walmart could probably eat, and more than the Walton family is willing to swallow.
And it would be a shame to waste such a good opportunity to raise prices by 30% anyway and go “shucks, tariffs”.
Also, people tend to assume the % is applied to the retail cost when it’s actually on the wholesale cost.