Home Depot is holding firm on its promise to keep prices steady despite mounting pressure from tariffs, even as President Trump escalates his public feud with major retailers like Walmart and Mattel by warning consumers of potential price hikes.
The home improvement giant has been quietly working with suppliers to shift production away from China and has pressed vendors to offer price concessions as a way to shield consumers from the financial fallout of the trade war.
“We anticipate that 12 months from now, no single country outside the United States will represent more than 10% of our purchases,” Chief Financial Officer Richard McPhail said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
Unlike several competitors, including Walmart, Home Depot has not revised its financial forecast for 2025. US comparable sales ticked up by 0.2%, with customer transactions rising 2.1% to 394.8 million, according to the company.
While weather dampened sales in February, McPhail said strong home values and low unemployment meant shoppers were still spending on renovations.
“Homeowners continue to have money to invest in home-improvement projects,” he noted.
The company’s resilience stands in contrast to Walmart, which recently told investors it may have to raise prices to offset tariff-related costs.
“We probably will not be able to absorb all the pressure that these tariffs are putting on our business,” Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said during a recent earnings call.
That comment drew a sharp rebuke from Trump, who posted on social media over the weekend demanding that the retail giant “EAT THE TARIFFS.”
He pointed to Walmart’s healthy profits as justification for absorbing the extra costs. “I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!!!” the president warned.
White House officials quickly backed Trump’s stance. “He maintains the position that foreign countries absorb these tariffs,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Monday.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that Walmart would “eat some of the tariffs” and minimized the CEO’s warning, saying it was part of standard corporate disclosures.
“CEOs, I believe, are legally obligated to give the most dire warnings and forecasts to their investors and stakeholders,” Leavitt said.
Walmart responded in a statement that offered no indication it would reverse course.
“We have always worked to keep our prices as low as possible, and we won’t stop,” said spokeswoman Molly Blakeman. “We’ll keep prices as low as we can for as long as we can given the reality of small retail margins.”
The White House’s confrontational approach has extended beyond Walmart.
Last month, Trump turned his attention to toy maker Mattel, which had warned that tariffs could force it to raise prices on its most popular products, including Barbie dolls.
In response, Trump threatened a steep retaliatory tariff on Mattel’s goods, declaring, “It won’t sell one toy in the United States.”
He later dismissed concerns over toy inflation, saying, “Children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls,” and that a doll might “cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.”
Trump’s insistence that businesses eat the costs of tariffs marks a notable shift from his 2024 campaign rhetoric. At the time, he attacked Democratic rival Kamala Harris for endorsing price controls on groceries and household goods, calling her proposal “Soviet-style” regulation.
Now, with sweeping tariffs in place — 10% on nearly all imports and up to 30% on goods from China — the president is taking an increasingly active role in telling companies how to manage their margins.
“Tariffs are the most misunderstood thing maybe in any form of business,” Trump said at a White House event earlier this month.
“Oftentimes, the country picks them up. Oftentimes, the company picks it up. The people don’t pick it up, OK? The people don’t pick it up.”
The Post has sought comment from the White House.
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