Trump rapped stores for raising prices. Do they have a choice?

When US President Donald Trump complained on Saturday that Walmart should “stop trying to blame tariffs” for looming price increases, many economists recalled the last time they heard a president rail against companies for raising prices.

- NOAM SCHEIBER

It was last year, in fact, when President Joe Biden cited “corporate greed” as the reason Americans were paying more for gas, food and rent, while deflecting criticism that his policies had worsened inflation.

And economists are generally no more persuaded of the accusation when a Republican levelled it than when a Democrat did.

“Fundamentally, what we're seeing in both instances is that the president makes a policy mistake, that policy mistake leads to an increase in consumer prices and the president who made the policy mistake is blaming the businesses,” said Michael Strain, an economist at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.

In the case of Trump's tariffs, which are set at 30% on Chinese imports until mid-August, the effects will reverberate across the economy, either pushing up prices for consumers or, if companies do absorb some of the costs, lowering profits for businesses. Those responses could drive inflation, slow growth and raise unemployment.

Yet while mainstream economists are generally in agreement that there is nothing unseemly about companies raising prices when their costs spike, that view is hardly universal outside the profession.

A variety of populist-minded thinkers across the political spectrum think there may be grounds for concern about price gouging, and that Trump wasn’t necessarily wrong to call out companies for raising prices.

“I'm not here to tell you whether he’s right about certain industries,’ said Elizabeth Wilkins, the president of the Roosevelt Institute, a liberal think tank. “But the basic idea that companies have more pricing power than we believe that they did is something we should interrogate.”

Trump suggested that Walmart use its billions in profits from last year — “far more than expected,’ he wrote on his platform Truth Social on Saturday — to cushion consumers against price increases.