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If current trends hold, consumers are likely to keep shopping during the heavy holiday season despite tariffs, Walmart US CEO John Furner said Wednesday at Semafor’s World Economy Summit.
“We see a pretty resilient customer base,” he said, when asked about consumer behavior this winter, particularly with items impacted by tariffs. “We had a good summer. We had a good back-to-school [season]. The way seasons start, they tend to end that way.”
The Trump administration’s tariffs on foreign products have hit a slew of American businesses, and Walmart — the nation’s largest retailer — is no different. In recent months, Walmart has raised prices on select items, including baby items and home goods, to account for the increases. But Furner, who has led Walmart’s US business since 2019, also noted on Wednesday that the retailer has 7,000 rollbacks right now, “up pretty substantially from where we were at the beginning of the year.”
Walmart has been able to increase its quarterly sales and beat revenue forecasts by leaning on its grocery business and providing value for cost-conscious shoppers.
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Walmart is also making a bigger push into AI products, largely to support its customers’ shopping experience. On Tuesday, it announced an integration with OpenAI that lets ChatGPT users buy Walmart products directly through the chatbot. (OpenAI is a sponsor of the Semafor World Economy Summit: Fall 2025 Edition.)
The retailer is integrating agentic features that will help consumers compare products on its website, make purchase decisions, and soon, complete the transaction more seamlessly, Furner said.
“The idea that agents can help us in so many ways in our life is coming real very quickly,” he said. “The real trick for us is understanding at the beginning: What is the demand of an item, and what’s the demand of the category? And then understanding really clearly what we own and where it is, and knowing how deployable it will be in real time so that our customer needs are taken care of.”