| Today’s Businessweek Daily is a special edition featuring stories from the March issue of the magazine, available online now. Editor Brad Stone is here with more about the cover story. If you like what you see, tell your friends! Sign up here. You can also subscribe to get the print edition. Last month, I traveled to Bentonville, Arkansas, to visit the American company that perhaps more than any other is vulnerable to shifting political and economic headwinds: Walmart Inc. My colleagues Jaewon Kang and Devin Leonard and I watched CEO Doug McMillon open a sprawling corporate campus reminiscent of Silicon Valley largesse. It stood in contrast to the humble frugality of Walmart’s founder, Sam Walton, and his original wood-paneled office, where we interviewed McMillon. He’s attempting some big moves, such as countering Amazon.com Inc.’s expansive online marketplace, which is subject to knockoffs like the Walmart Birkin, and taking on rival Target Corp. by renovating stores and improving merchandise. He’s also trying to placate President Donald Trump and protect Walmart’s famously global supply chain from the punitive effects of threatened tariffs. “We’ve been dealing with tariffs for a long time,” McMillon told us for our March cover story. “We don’t want to see anything happen that would cause those prices to go back up.” McMillon projects the contemplative calm of a confident salesman. But as you’ll recognize from our March issue, the world around him is anything but soothing. California and its insurance industry must figure out how to rebuild from the devastating fires in the Los Angeles area; Elon Musk and his DOGE army are taking a wrecking ball to the federal workforce; and in another gripping feature article, we look at how teenage auto theft gangs are funneling stolen cars from the US to Africa. We wish we were all as effortlessly placid as Doug McMillon. Read more. |
