When Walmart announced last week that it would likely be forced to start raising prices soon in response to the new tariffs raised by the Trump administration last month, the president responded in typical fashion. “Walmart should STOP trying to blame Tariffs as the reason for raising prices throughout the chain,” Trump wrote on in a social media post on Saturday, arguing that the company made billions in profit last year and should “eat the tariffs” together with China and not pass the additional costs on to consumers.
And while President Trump is probably aware that no public company would voluntarily absorb the impact of such high tariffs at the expense of its own bottom line and its shareholders’ return, the reasoning behind his strong pushback against announcements like Walmart’s is pretty clear: inflation and high prices are one of the biggest pain points for American consumers, who are still suffering from the lasting effects of the inflation crisis. Trump knows this and desperately wants to avoid having his name associated with further price hikes, which is why he’s trying to divert the blame to the companies actually raising the prices.
According to a recent YouGov/Economist poll, 25 percent of Americans named inflation and prices as the issue most important to them, when asked to pick just one key issue. That makes it by far the most pressing problem ahead of jobs and the economy (12 percent), health care (12 percent), climate change and immigration (both at seven percent). At the same time, Trump scores worst in his handling of inflation with 44 percent of Americans strongly disapproving with the way he’s handling this key issue and another 14 percent somewhat disapproving. Just 35 percent of respondents strongly or somewhat approved of Trump’s handling of inflation, as many polls have shown that Americans are fully aware of the inflationary effect of tariffs.
