# Retail Resilience Amidst Consumer Caution

**Podcast:** WSJ What’s News
**Published:** 2026-02-12

## Transcript

Access to affordable credit helps me pay my employees.
But I don't really need it.
Inflation is killing me.
But who cares?
Big retailers are making record profits.
That's why we support the Durban Marshall credit card bill.
See, thanks and credit unions help small businesses make payroll.
This bill would cut the vital resources they need.
While increasing megastore profits, they deserve it, don't they?
Tell Congress stop the Durban Marshall money grab for corporate megastores.
Paid for by the Electronic Payments Coalition.
The GOP-led House rejects President Trump's Canada tariffs, but backs him up on his voter ID push.
Plus, Elon Musk announces a shakeup at XAIM as it merges with SpaceX, and we'll look at how cautious consumers are reshaping retail.
Even though this consumer continues to be very aware of how expensive items are becoming, it's not necessarily meaning they'll pull all the way back.
It's just meaning that as a retailer, you have to fight harder for them.
You have to bring your A game.
Oh, at least one of them.
Colorado's Jeff Hurd, said he was comfortable with his decision.
Here he was, speaking to CNN.
Now you say this is something that supports the president's agenda of onshore and reshore and manufacturing.
He's absolutely right.
There's a lot that we need to be doing.
There are a lot of trade uh imbalances and uh trade abuses that are happening.
But we need to do it the right way, consistent with the Constitution, and I worry about the precedent that we might be setting if there's a Democratic precedent.
The move is largely symbolic.
Even if the resolution clears the Senate, President Trump would almost certainly veto it.
Nevertheless, Democrats are planning more anti-terror votes, targeting U.S.
levies on Brazil and other countries.
Meanwhile, House Republicans were able to advance a key GOP priority yesterday, passing legislation that would significantly tighten federal voter registration requirements.
The Safe America Act requires that voters show proof of citizenship and would establish a nationwide voter identification requirement for casting ballots.
While Republicans have framed the bill as common sense legislation, Democrats warn it could impose barriers for eligible voters.
Here's Journal Reporter Anvi Butani.
Support exists currently.
There are fresh signs that international pressure on Russia's oil industry is having an effect as dozens of tankers filled with Russian oil float at sea without buyers.
Joining me with more is Journal Finance Editor Alex Frangos.
Alex, what's going on here, both with these ships kind of loitering around at sea, but also this real pricing squeeze, Russian oil being discounted heavily on global markets.
There's been a lot of pressure on Russia from European countries and the US in terms of new sanctions on individual boats in their so-called shadow fleet that they've been using to move oil around the last few years.
There's also been these seizures that the Trump administration has conducted against shadow fleet ships that mostly work in Venezuela, but are also tied to some Russian oil shipments.
And then Trump struck this deal with India to lower tariffs there in exchange for India saying they would cut back on buying Russian oil.
So all this has meant that there's all this Russian oil that gets produced, but they have fewer buyers, and a lot of the oil is being stored on ships floating at sea, waiting for a buyer to say, well, if the price gets low enough, we'll buy it.
I mean, everyone wants lower prices, Alex, but they're already quite cheap.
And I want you to zoom in on that for us.
This really kind of amazing gap that's opening up between what Russian crude oil is fetching on world markets and where international Brent crude prices are.
Yeah, so normal oil that is sold from uh non-sanctioned countries sells for something in the $60 to $65 a barrel range.
Russia, in order to sell its oil, has to offer a discount that's as much as like $27 per barrel.
So they lose a lot of money compared to back when they were a legitimate member of the global economy.
I guess I'm just curious why this discount isn't making it more tempting than for countries to go in and buy this oil and get a great deal on it.
Yeah, it's a steep discount, but there are fewer buyers because India is saying they're not going to buy as much.
And so then you're left with China.
And there are certain buyers in China who are willing to take it, but not everyone, because the other dynamic here is there's a lot of oil in the world right now.
The oil price in general isn't that high.
So refiners, these so-called teapot refineries in China, kind of independent, more nimble refiners who buy a lot of illicit oil from places like Russia and Iran, and until recently Venezuela, they can afford to say, well, keep waiting until the price goes down more.
It was General Finance Editor Alex Frangos.
Alex, thanks as always.
Thank you.
Elon Musk has announced a reorganization of his AI startup, XAI, just days after it merged with his rocket and satellite company SpaceX.
The changes include parting ways with two of XAI's co-founders and comes amid what tech reporter Georgia Wells says is a rapid expansion at the company.
One working on its scrock chatbot, another devoted to a coding specific AI model, another working on image generation, and a fourth pursuing a project called Macro Hard, which Musk described as intended to do digital emulation of entire companies.
Musk added that he plans to take SpaceX public by July.
And let's quickly spin through some earnings updates we're getting this morning.
Zero alcohol beers are helping to drive sales for Budweiser maker A.B.
InBev, the world's largest brewer is contending with a broad decline in drinking, especially amongst younger people, but recorded 34% growth in its teetotal portfolio last year, led by Corona Zero.
AirMez is signaling confidence about its 2026 sales growth after logging a strong Christmas shopping season.
And Japan's soft bank has posted a quarterly profit thanks to gains in its Visions Funds business.
Its shares are up more than 9% so far this year, driven by hopes that stronger AI demand will boost its investments in companies like ARM Holdings and OpenAI.
Coming up, we'll unpack what this week's earnings from retail giants tell us about the state of the American consumer.
That's the break.
How are the U.S.
businesses of Philip Morris International invested in America?
We're invested in advancing science, giving adults who smoke better options.
We're invested in American manufacturing, helping local economies thrive.
We're invested in community, supporting military veterans and their families, disaster relief, and economic empowerment.
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See how at USPMI.com.
Let's turn to earnings this week from retail giants, which are revealing a tale of two worlds in which manufacturers like Kraft Heinz, Coca-Cola, and Unilever face a fragile consumer economy, and yet all the while, American spending isn't dropping.
Dow Jones reporter Ame Look covers retail earnings for us and says years of rising prices have battered consumers' pocketbooks and made them increasingly cost conscious.
Consumers are increasingly switching to lower cost items.
They're increasingly frustrated with high prices and higher inflation.
And that is a big challenge for the consumer conglomerates like Coca-Cola or Kraft Heinz or Unilever because people are less focused on the type of brand and more focused on the function amid this challenging environment when it comes to looking at rising house prices, rising grocery prices, and higher unemployment and that sort of thing as well, is all straining consumers.
Joining me now with more is Melissa Minko, the Global Director for Retail Strategy and Insights at CINT.
Melissa, your job is to predict consumer behavior so that your firm can work to build suitable tech products to help out companies like some of the ones we've been talking about.
Melissa Ame there was outlining a tricky environment for big retailers.
I'm curious how you characterize it.
Yeah, it's a really puzzling environment when it comes to consumers.
You have low consumer sentiment or low consumer confidence.
You have consumers in our survey telling us that they are pulling back on spend and that they feel prices over the next year are expected to go up and they're worried about it.
But then you look at the spending data and they are still spending.
So it's not really discouraging them.
What it's doing is making them much more strategic shoppers.
They're even more savvy than ever before now that they have the technology to support them and help with all of the decisions they have to make.
And in this hyper competitive market, rather than experiencing decision fatigue, they're just getting savvy and still spending.
I mean, this is kind of the enigma, especially of the US economy, right?
Like a pretty fragile macro outlook, a lot of anxiety we've covered here recently about jobs, for instance.
The housing market's got plenty of issues around affordability and just availability, and yet the spending is continuing.
Is that just a US phenomenon right now?
It actually is, and not even just now.
Over the last couple years, it's what I've observed.
I'm in a global role, I'm based in London, but I monitor all of the markets.
And what I've seen repeatedly is especially in the UK, consumers are so impacted by the cost of living crisis that they actually do pull back their spend and they're a more conservative consumer overall.
But in the US, even though they repeatedly articulate that they are aware of the cost of living crisis and just how difficult prices are becoming for them, they're still spending.
Looking at earnings at least, these companies aren't reporting major losses.
You you know, even as consumers, you say they're getting creative here, they're trading down, you know, looking for alternate brands, though that it has to have some impact on the bottom line.
I mean, there's a reason many of these companies like people to buy their brand name products, right?
So I'm just curious what all this means for these consumer facing brands.
Yeah, I mean, it definitely is important to note that private label is growing.
It's of increasing interest to consumers.
But what retailers and brands are able to do now, thanks to AI and just advanced technology is be more dynamic with their pricing models.
Walmart, for example, has talked about how they've been changing prices at an individual item level in closer to real time.
And that's really beneficial for them.
And obviously, they've been doing extremely well over the last couple of years because of this economic environment and their ability to adjust.
And the more retailers implement that type of fluctuating dynamism with their prices, the more they can react in real time to the market and to the consumer needs and offer them the best prices at that moment, kind of meet the consumer where they're at.
And a shopper might see this what scan a code here on your phone to see what the actual price is, or a digital screen buy an item on a shelf or something like that?
Receiving personalized promotions, for example, if they download the app, or seeing numbers change day by day depending on expiration dates or stock availability.
You mentioned private label, you know, in terms of how the brands see this on their bottom line.
Are they finding ways to increase their margins there?
They've got to, right?
If if that's where the consumer's going, that's got to become a more efficient part of their business.
Exactly.
And so that's why I'm thinking about this in a lot of ways as profit protection and not necessarily always cost reduction, because there's only so far you can slash your costs.
So a lot of times we think about that as lowering the prices for the consumer in the moment, but sometimes it's not that.
Sometimes it's maintaining the higher price point or even lifting prices a little bit when you know the consumer is willing to pay more.
I've been speaking to Melissa Minka, the global director for retail strategy and insights at CINT.
Melissa, thank you so much for being with us on What's News.
Thank you for having me.
And that's it for What's News for this Thursday morning.
Today's show was produced by Hattie Moyer.
Our supervising producer is Sandra Kilhoff.
And I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal.
We'll be back tonight with a new show.
Until then, thanks for listening.
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