Walmart CFO John Rainey tells Bloomberg that convicted felon President Trump’s declaration of trade war with China is already sending prices higher for their customers, irrespective of the fat bastard’s partial capitulation. “If you’ve not already seen it, it will happen in May and then it will become more pronounced,” said Rainey ahead of the company’s quarterly earnings release dropped on Thursday, adding “It’s a challenging environment to operate in retail right now, with prices going up like this. There really hasn’t been a historical precedent or prices going up this high, this fast. The magnitude of the increases though are so large that retailers can’t absorb these by themselves.”
Now’s a great time to dig up that seminal “MAGA Land” comment from November when Rainey warned this was going to happen: “Walmart is just upset that they can’t stock cheap products that don’t last very long and we have no idea of how they would be rolled out. Perhaps, just perhaps we all would think about unnecessary purchases if low-priced things were more expensive. I believe he will start with Autos and Electronics. Toys, other stuff later. But a question, exactly how many toys does a child need? Answer = None! Needs are different from Wants.” Evergreen, that one.