Doug McMillon, the CEO of Walmart, reportedly told President Donald Trump -- alongside other business leaders who met the president in the Oval Office on Monday -- that his tariff policy is "not good for anybody."
According to a report published in The Daily Beast on Friday, McMillon and the other CEOs reportedly warned Trump that "he was creating a situation that would not be good for anybody."
The report noted that he began working at Walmart at the age of 17 and accidentally rear-ended his boss's car as he arrived for his first day of stocking shelves. Now 58 years old, he has served as the CEO of the country's largest retailer for over a decade, achieving $648 billion in sales last year.
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Target CEO Brian Cornell and Home Depot CEO Ted Decker also met Trump on Monday.
They reportedly told him about the adverse impacts of his tariffs. The CEOs particularly mentioned the 145 percent tariff imposed on China, warning that his policies might soon result in empty store shelves across the country.
On Tuesday, Trump said at a press conference in the Oval Office that he had reconsidered the tariffs on China.
“145% is very high and it won’t be that high,” the president said, adding, “It won’t be anywhere near that high. It’ll come down substantially. But it won’t be zero.”
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But the president's version of his meeting with the CEOs was different from what has been reported.
“I had the head of Walmart. I had the head of Home Depot and the head of Target in my office. And I’ll tell you what they think, they think what I’m doing is exactly right," he said in a recent interview.
Trump said the United States has entered into 200 trade agreements, though he did not disclose who the partners are. In an interview with Time Magazine published Friday, Trump said, "I've made 200 deals."
"If we are lucky, Trump will have many more meetings with the guy who started out stocking shelves and became an actual great businessman, not one who played one on television. The president would have done well to have ditched Musk and listened to McMillon from the start," the Beast article said.
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