Home Depot
Home Depot has no plans to hike prices due to tariff issues. “We intend to generally maintain our current pricing levels across our portfolio,” Chief Financial Officer Richard McPhail told CNBC on May 20. McPhail says Home Depot can weather the tariff storm, thanks to “the great partnerships we have with our suppliers and productivity that we continue to drive in our business.”
Target
So far, Target has resisted boosting prices over tariffs, preferring instead to negotiate prices with suppliers and recalculate inventory order times. Company executives noted that this has allowed the retail giant to manage “the vast majority” of tariff pressures.
Kimberly-Clark
Consumer goods kingpin Kimberly-Clark, which makes household brands like Huggies, Kleenex, and Scott paper goods, is resisting price hikes due to competitive concerns. Like Target, the company is exploring creative ways to cut costs, such as working with sourcing companies on prices and supply chain adjustments.
Playing the Long Game
Companies that have so far resisted hiking prices are making a savvy move, business experts say.
“Rather than raising prices across the board, many take a more strategic approach—cutting back on discounts, shrinking package sizes, or quietly nudging shoppers toward private label options,” Ravi Sawhney, founder of Los Angeles-based RKS Design, which advises companies on product development and consumer behavior, told NTD. “It’s less about passing on every cost and more about managing perception and protecting loyalty.”
Size has its advantages, too.
“These playing the long game—prioritizing customer trust over short-term margins,” Sawhney said. “Thanks to global supply networks and long-standing supplier agreements, they have more flexibility than smaller or premium brands to absorb pricing pressures without hitting shoppers too hard.”
Even so, it may prove difficult for big industry names to keep tariff-fueled price hikes out of the equation, experts say.
“Higher tariffs have a huge impact – they raise the basic price of goods and cut into seller’s margins,” Rita McGrath, Columbia Business School Professor and an advisor to Fortune 500 companies like Microsoft, Pfizer, and Coca-Cola, told NTD. “Like all the other elements of price a retailer has to take into account—inventory costs, labor, rent, store operations, shrink, and more—they will find their way into the pricing equation eventually or the retailer will be less and less able to make a profit.”
If tariff issues persist, even the holdouts may pivot to hire prices. “Some big retailers may be able to hold off on raising prices for a while, but eventually they’ll have to recoup these costs somehow,” McGrath said.
