Here's What Could Cost More at Walmart Stores Soon
Shoppers are girding themselves for Walmart prices to rise in the coming weeks. But which products will actually get larger price tags?
The company hasn’t said yet, and it declined to comment for this story. Executives, however, have offered clues, and retail experts have ideas: Watch the products that make up the roughly one-third of Walmart (WMT) goods sold in the U.S. but are made outside the country—and for which the company expects to pay more under the Trump administration’s tariff regime. Most of Walmart’s imports come from China, Mexico, Vietnam, India and Canada, CEO Doug McMillon said last week.
“There’s little doubt that categories heavily exposed to imports from China will see prices rise,” said Zak Stambor, a senior retail and ecommerce analyst with market research firm eMarketer. “That means consumers should expect to pay more for items like electronics, toys, apparel, footwear, and sporting equipment.”
Seasonal goods—including stuff bought for back-to-school, Halloween and Christmas—are at risk of price hikes, Stambor said.
The July-to-August back-to-school season, when many shoppers buy new clothes, backpacks, laptops and dorm essentials, is typically retailers’ second-most important sales period after the holidays. And Stambor expects prices for Halloween and Christmas items to go up, as much of that merchandise—costumes, decorations, artificial trees and lights—is imported from China.
Walmart has touted strong sales of groceries, its biggest product category, in recent quarters, but McMillon said the company could struggle to hold prices low on items imported from countries such as Costa Rica, Peru, and Colombia.
“We'll do our best to control what we can control in order to keep food prices as low as possible,” he said.
Retail expert Mark Cohen, former director of retail studies at Columbia University's business school, said Walmart and other large retailers can decide where to raise prices and where to hold them.
“But they can’t decide what is tariffed and what is not,” he said. “If a tomato is going to be 15% more expensive because it is imported from Mexico, and Walmart doesn’t want to raise the price by that much, it can choose to put the 15% burden on some other product, which it believes has more price elasticity."
Other retailers are also likely to raise prices to offset the effects of tariffs on their own imports–and because Walmart’s increases could give it cover to do the same, retail experts say. Target (TGT) executives earlier Wednesday said tariffs weighed on its first-quarter sales; President Donald Trump has expressed displeasure with the notion of higher prices at Walmart.
“With tariffs at their highest levels in nearly a century, the math is getting tougher for retailers like Walmart to square,” Stambor said.