In this articleWMTHDTGTFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNTCustomer with shopping cart in the snack aisle of a Walmart store in Florida City, Florida, Aug. 5, 2025.JC Milhet | AFP | Getty ImagesAs some of the biggest names in retail, including Walmart and Home Depot, delivered earnings results in recent weeks, they updated Wall Street on how they and their shoppers are responding to President Donald Trump’s wave of tariff increases.The takeaway?Tariff costs are rising for retailers, and they’ve had to get creative to avoid widespread price hikes.Yet consumer spending has largely stayed strong so far — and the pinch from higher duties hasn’t been as severe as some companies had feared. Compared with their concerns in the spring, retail executives struck a measured tone and said they don’t expect their costs, or customers’ prices, to jump dramatically.Walmart had given one of the strongest warnings in May, as CFO John David Rainey said he expected some prices to rise during the summer. In an interview with CNBC on Thursday, however, Rainey said the nation’s biggest retailer has raised prices on some items, but in other parts of its stores has kept prices down or expanded discounts.”There are certainly areas where we have fully absorbed the impact of higher tariff costs,” he said. “There are other areas where we’ve had to pass some of those costs along. But when you look across the basket of items, we’re certainly trying to keep prices as low as we can.”Scot Ciccarelli, a retail analyst for Truist, said retailers are raising prices “but not nearly to the degree that might have been expected in early April” when Trump first announced his steep tariffs on dozens of countries.”Most of the companies are kind of downplaying the impact of tariffs,” he said. “They’ve all talked about substantial mitigation efforts, whether that is diversifying sourcing, whether that is pushing price back to vendors.”Here are three takeaways from a busy couple of weeks of retail earnings.Consumer spending is steady — with some exceptionsThe drumbeat of steady, but selective, U.S. consumer spending continued this quarter.At Walmart, the nation’s largest grocer by revenue, sales of private-label items, which tend to cost less than national name brands, were roughly flat, Rainey told CNBC. When customers trade down to those cheaper brands or smaller packs of items, it can signal U.S. households feel strapped for cash.As companies closely watch the consumer, Rainey said Walmart has seen shopper behavior that’s “very consistent.””They continue to be very resilient,” he said.Walmart and Coach parent company Tapestry both raised their sales outlooks for the full year. Both companies said they saw healthy sales of discretionary items, such as clothing and handbags.Sales of fashion items, including ladies’ apparel and shoes, accelerated at Walmart in the quarter, Rainey said. One of Coach’s handbags, the large Kisslock bag that costs $695, sold out within minutes of launching in July, Tapestry CEO Joanne Crevoiserat said last week on the company’s earnings call.Yet some categories are still a tough sell. And lower-income shoppers have been more sensitive to price changes.Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said Thursday that the effect of tariffs on spending “has been somewhat muted.” Still, he added some shoppers have noticed and responded when prices creep up.”As we replenish inventory at post-tariff price levels, we’ve continued to see our costs increase each week, which we expect will continue into the third and fourth quarters,” he said. “Not surprisingly, we see more adjustments in middle- and lower-income households than we do with higher-income households and discretionary categories where item prices have gone up.”Sales at Home Depot and Lowe’s improved as the quarter went on, with the strongest in July. Still, the companies weren’t ready to predict a turnaround for home improvement.Lowe’s CEO Marvin Ellison attributed some of the recent pickup in demand to better weather and said “it’s too early for us to call that a trend.” Higher mortgage rates and borrowing costs have dinged homeowners’ willingness to tackle a major renovation or move to a new home, which tends to spur home projects.Other brands had more dire warnings about spending. On the company’s earnings call, Crocs CEO Andrew Rees described the backdrop for the second half of the year as “concerning” and said its retail orders are weak.He described Crocs’ customers as “super cautious.””They’re not purchasing. They’re not ev …
