BENTONVILLE, ARK. — At Walmart’s annual investor day event, top executives said they expect the retail giant to meet its growth expectations despite having to navigate a tariff-clouded global trade environment.

The Walmart Investor Community Meeting, held April 9 at the company’s Bentonville headquarters, came on the same day that the Trump administration ordered a 90-day pause on US retaliatory tariffs of 10% to 49% on more than 50 nations, which had been in effect since midnight.

However, the 10% universal tariff on goods imported into the United States, announced April 2 and effective April 9, went forward. The White House also proceeded with its “reciprocal” tariffs against China and raised them from 104% to 125% after China had responded with tariffs on the United States.  

“We are one week into this new tariff environment, so we’re still working through what it means,” John Rainey, chief financial officer of Walmart, told investors and financial analysts at the meeting. “As a reminder, more than two-thirds of what we sell in the US is made, grown or assembled in the US. The third that we import comes from all over the world, but China and Mexico are the most significant.”

Tariffs of 25% on some goods from Mexico and Canada remain in effect since March, along with 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

Savvy management is the key

Both Rainey and Doug McMillon, president and chief executive officer, framed the tariff situation for Walmart as primarily an issue of management.

“Our priorities in this environment are to keep prices as low as we can — our team is experienced with managing price over a portfolio of items — manage our inventory well, manage our costs,” Rainey said in his presentation. “For the current quarter, the uncertainty and decline in consumer sentiment has led to a little more sales volatility week to week, but we still expect Q1 sales to be in the range of our guidance of 3% to 4% growth, which includes a 100-basis-point headwind from lapping leap day.

“Operating income has been harder to predict, and we’ve widened our internal range of scenarios given the current backdrop. When we guided Q1 in mid-February, we signaled that we expected pressure on OI growth, and that remains the case.”

 Category mix has been ‘less favorable” in the fiscal 2026 first quarter as general merchandise sales were softer early on, but they’ve since improved as the quarter has progressed, Rainey said.

“We see opportunities to accelerate share gains and are maintaining flexibility to invest in price as tariffs are applied to incoming goods,” he said.

When reporting fiscal 2025 results back in February, Walmart projected fiscal 2026 adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $2.50 to $2.60, reflecting a 5¢-per-share headwind from foreign exchange. The retailer forecast fiscal 2026 net sales growth at 3% to 4%, including a 20-basis-point headwind from cycling the leap year and a 20-basis-point tailwind from its Vizio Holding Corp. acquisition. Adjusted operating income growth is pegged at 3.5% to 5.5%.

“Our guidance for sales and operating income growth for the full year remains unchanged; we are focused on the long term,” Rainey said. “What history tells us is that when we lean into these periods of economic uncertainty, Walmart emerges on the other side with greater share and a stronger business. We expect the current period to be no different.”

Walmart is scheduled to report first-quarter results on May 15.

“Nothing about this current environment changes anything that we are discussing with you today,” Rainey noted to investors. “There is a consistency in what we are sharing with what we said two years ago. Our business model is more diversified, more durable and more relevant than ever in this current environment.”

Uncertain economic times nothing new

Kicking off the Q&A portion of the investor event, McMillon brought some levity to the volatile macro-economic situation when the first analyst question centered on tariffs.

“In case any of you want to place an online wager, the current over and under on tariff-related questions sits at six — that’s the number we’ve all chosen,” he said.

Yet McMillon emphasized that tariffs aren’t new to Walmart, and the company is well-seasoned in navigating periods of economic uncertainty.

“When we think about this situation, we’re not unfamiliar with tariffs over time, including starting in 2017, and it’s a very fluid situation,” he explained. “It’s a management opportunity, and that’s the way I think about it. We can’t control some things. We’re going to focus on what we can control. We're going to do our best to keep prices as low as we can.

“Inventory management is always important but becomes even more important in this environment. So where our merchants are making quantity decisions, where they’re dealing with pricing that they didn’t anticipate when they set their plan, all those kinds of management-related decisions become really important.”

Walmart’s diverse business enables the company to quickly rebalance in response to changing economic conditions, McMillon noted.

“In our case, we have the benefit of mixed management,” he said. “It’s great to be in a business where we sell fresh produce and we sell apparel and we sell hard lines, and now we have stores and a growing e-commerce business that in the US we expect to be profitable this year. So there are just all these variables related to different aspects of our business.

“Earlier today, we were talking about Marketplace (third-party online sellers); that’s another set of variables. We’ll approach it in partnership with our suppliers. We’ve been doing business with these companies and, the vast majority of cases, factories around the world for a very long time. And we want them to be successful. We need them to be here. We want them to be able to invest in new product development.”

Bank of America Securities analyst Robert Ohmes described Walmart as “not immune, but positioned well for tariffs” in an April 10 research note on the retailer’s investor day event.

“While uncertainty continues around the magnitude and timing of tariffs, Walmart noted that over two-thirds of what it sells in the US is domestically produced, and of the remaining one-third, its largest import markets are China and Mexico,” Ohmes said. “Walmart’s deep relationships with suppliers, advanced pricing, automation, inventory management capabilities and potential to shift imported 1P inventory to a 3P marketplace structure are significant advantages versus other retailers.

“Walmart also has early-stage growth drivers coming into play that help mitigate potential tariff volatility, including the shift to ecommerce profitability, growth in digital advertising and Marketplace, pharmacy delivery, improvements in India (Flipkart) and strength in Sam’s Club (US/China). We also believe Walmart is not seeing a significant anti-US impact in the international markets that it operates in (Walmex, Sam’s China, etc.).”