Andrea Felsted, Columnist

Walmart Rings More Alarm Bells for the US Economy

Shoppers are growing nervous. If the world’s largest retailer is struggling, the rest of the consumer sector is going to hurt even worse.

July 26, 2022 at 6:30 AM EDT

By Andrea Felsted

Andrea Felsted is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering consumer goods and the retail industry. Previously, she was a reporter for the Financial Times.

Warnings.
Photographer: Brandon Bell/Getty Images North America

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It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Walmart Inc. is the world’s biggest retailer, with stores that are a beacon of low prices and a corporate culture that is famously penny-pinching. If anyone was to thrive in the current economic environment, it should have been the big-box retailer. And yet, on Monday it warned on profit for a second time in just over two months. That is an ominous sign for the whole consumer sector and the broader US economy.

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