President Trump has taken aim at notable US companies like retailer Walmart (WMT) and automaker Ford (F) after they warned about price hikes tied to the administration's tariffs.

Yahoo Finance Washington correspondent Ben Werschkul lays out what the president and his administration could do to pressure these companies to ultimately "eat" the tariff costs.

To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here.

Video Transcript

00:00 Speaker A

President Trump has taken aim at some companies in recent weeks or possible tariff price hikes. But what could Trump do if he's serious about trying to make companies quote unquote eat the increases? Here with Moga who finances Ben Worshkol. So how could he sort of make good on some of his threats, Ben?

00:23 Ben Worshkol

Sure thing. So, he's, so President Trump has offered kind of harsh words for four retailers so far on around around tariff price hikes: Walmart, Amazon, Ford, and Mattel. And the strategy so far is kind of a public pressure one. It kind of so-called name and shame. He told Walmart, "I'll be watching." But what I looked at for the story is what options are available to the president if he decides to go further. And the bottom line is there's quite a few. Experts point to things like a federal trade commission investigation by sector, other government investigations around issues like specific products and or profits, capital hill legislation. There's some ideas there and then the big one would be price controls via executive order. But the interesting thing about all these tools is that if Trump were to avail and him and his folks aren't saying whether any are under consideration. The the man he might have the most to thank for this is Joe Biden because a lot of these are tools that the Biden administration availed themselves to for very different reasons. They essentially stress tested them around around charges of price gouging during inflation. There was an investigation on meat packers for example, that that could be very similar if Trump were to go further. And this is all part of a larger trend. There's a economist at the Cato Institute named Ryan Bourne, I spoke to for the story, who talks about sort of a bipartisan push towards increasing government intervention, especially on prices. It's essentially a building up of government, both the bureaucratic and the legal apparatus to to be more involved in in in private business pricing decisions. How this specific with Trump plays out, it remains to be seen. Again, the Trump administration isn't saying that they're they're pondering this beyond the kind of, "I'll be watching you," message that they're sending. But but Bourne and others make a pretty convincing case that interventions by companies could become more common in the years ahead because of because of what they're they're building up in in both the Biden and the Trump administration.

03:39 Speaker A

Ben, thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks.  Related Videos

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