Trump’s Angry Walmart Tirade Backfires, Wrecking His Own Tariff Scam

THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

The New Republic

News, Politics

4.4 • 798 Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2025

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

President Donald Trump’s feud with Walmart is intensifying. After the retail giant warned that its prices will go up due to Trump’s tariffs, he erupted on Truth Social, and even threatened Walmart to get it to “eat” the costs of his levies. Then White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt reiterated the threat to reporters. Amusingly enough, all this constitutes an admission that other countries don’t pay the costs of the tariffs, as he keeps claiming—we do. We talked to Lindsay Owens, an economist who’s also executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative. She explains how Trump accidentally undermined his case for tariffs, why this is so damaging given Walmart’s massive presence in MAGA America, and what all this reveals about Trump’s growing political weakness on the economy. Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey Jack, I'm seeing your business everywhere. Have you got a new marketing person or something?
0:04.8	You could say I've got a new secret weapon for print. Print? Oh, Vista print, right? That's not a secret.
0:10.8	How did you know? Come on. Custom posters, branded mugs, stylish flyers. Only one place prints all that. Vista print.
0:17.7	Yeah, I got business cards, stickers, t-shirts, booklets, signage, even photo books from my last holiday.
0:22.6	Print everything for your business with VistaPrint.
0:25.6	If you need it, we print it at vistoprint.co.
0:28.6	.
0:29.6	This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network.
0:46.5	I'm your host, Greg Sargent.
1:00.8	President Donald Trump's feud with Walmart is intensifying.
1:06.0	After the retail giant warned that its prices will go up due to Trump's tariffs,
1:10.1	Trump erupted on truth social and even issued a bailed threat.
1:16.1	Then White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt reiterated the threat at Monday's media briefing.
1:22.5	What's amusing about all this is that it completely demolishes Trump's whole scam on this issue,
1:26.9	because it constitutes an admission that other countries don't pay the tariffs.
1:29.9	We do. So can Trump really use threats and bullying to conceal the truth about his policies from the American people?
1:34.9	Today we're talking about all of this with Lindsay Owens, an economist who's also executive
1:39.3	director of the Groundwork Collaborative. Thanks for coming on, Lindsay. Thanks for having me.
1:45.6	Okay, so last week, Walmart CEO Doug McMillan said some prices are going to rise, even factoring
1:52.3	in the temporary partial reduction on tariffs in China. Trump exploded in response to this,
1:58.0	saying the following, Walmart should stop trying to blame tariffs as the reasons for raising prices throughout the chain.
2:05.9	Between Walmart and China, they should, as is said,
	...

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