Target might have gone woke and been boycotted by conservatives from it, but its CEO isn’t so far to the left as to agree with Kamala’s ridiculous “price gouging” assertion. In fact, when he recently appeared on CNBC to discuss the economic situation, Target CEO Brian Cornell sounded off on Kamala’s claim that retailers are price-gouging their customers.
Harris, as background, had promised to fix prices on the campaign trail the week before Unanue’s interview, saying, “As president, I will take on the high costs that matter most to most Americans, like the cost of food. We all know that prices went up during the pandemic when the supply chains shut down and failed. But our supply chains have now improved. And prices are still too high.”
Cornell fired back against that claim, and others Harris has made about his company and other retailers being price gougers. His comments on the matter came when he appeared for an interview on CNBC and was asked, “Have you boosted any of your profits from gouging on prices? And how prevalent and pervasive do you think that was in terms of causing the recent 40-year highs in inflation?”
Responding, he noted that the claim is absurd at even the face level because his company, a giant in retail, has reduced prices on roughly 5,000 items. He also noted that the space is highly competitive, so prices have to be as low as they could possibly be, or else customers would go elsewhere. He said, “I’ll put my retail hat on for a second. You two talk to industry leaders in every different sector. Is there a more competitive space than retail?”
Continuing, he emphasized that point and described how low Target’s average margins on goods are in contrast with other industries that have double-digit percentage margins of profit. He said, “We’re celebrating this morning, the fact that we delivered a margin rate of over 6%. You talk to other CEOs who are delivering up income of 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%. So we’re in a penny business.”
Emphasizing that same point yet again, Cornell again noted that the business operates on extremely low margins and has to do so because of competition, and thus that customers are there for value, not because they have to and are being gouged on price. He said, “It is a penny business, and it’s a very competitive space, and we provide the value consumers are looking for.”
Further, Cornell pointed to how terrible Kamala’s idea of raising taxes would be, noting that the shopping experience is better because of the increased capital that came from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. He said, “When the taxes were reduced, we put our capital to work. Since 2017 when the corporate taxes were reduced, we spent close to $50 billion of capital building new stores across the country, remodeling over 1,000 stores.”
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Emphasizing that Target has put billions upon billions of dollars back in the business to earn larger profits, something that wouldn’t be possible were the tax rate still so high, he said, “We put the business dollars back into our business. It’s helped us grow since 2017 our top line almost $40 billion, and I think it’s the way America should work.”
Watch him here: