WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent acknowledged Sunday that Walmart, the largest U.S. retailer, may pass along some of the costs from President Donald Trump’s tariffs to its shoppers through higher prices.

Bessent described his call with the company’s CEO a day after Trump warned Walmart to avoid raising prices from the tariffs at all and vowed to keep a close watch on what it does.

As doubts persist about Trump’s economic leadership, Bessent pushed back against inflation concerns, praised the uncertainty caused by Trump as a negotiating tactic for trade talks and dismissed the downgrade Friday of U.S. government debt by Moody’s Ratings.

Yet Walmart does not appear prepared to “eat the tariffs” in full, as Trump has insisted that the company and China would do.

Bessent said he spoke Saturday with Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, stressing in two interviews on news shows that what he thought really mattered for Walmart customers is the decline in gasoline prices. Gas is averaging $3.18 a gallon, down from a year ago but higher over the past week, according to AAA.

“Walmart will be absorbing some of the tariffs, some may get passed on to consumers,” Bessent said on CNN. “Overall, I would expect inflation to remain in line. But I don’t blame consumers for being skittish after what happened to them for years under Biden,” a reference to inflation hitting a four-decade high in June 2022 under then-President Joe Biden as the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, government spending and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pushed up costs.

Walmart did not comment on Bessent’s description of his conversation with McMillon.

In a social post Saturday morning, Trump said Walmart should not charge its customers more money to offset the new tariff costs.

“I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!!!” he wrote.

Bessent said Walmart had been obligated under federal regulations on its earnings call Thursday “to give the worst-case scenario so that they’re not sued,” suggesting in an NBC interview that the price increases would not be severe.

But Walmart executives said last week that higher prices began to appear on their shelves in late April and accelerated this month.

“We’re wired to keep prices low, but there’s a limit to what we can bear, or any retailer for that matter,” Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Bessent maintained that the ratings downgrade was a “lagging indicator” because financial markets had already priced in the costs of a total federal debt of roughly $36 trillion. Still, the tax plan being pushed by Trump would add $3.3 trillion to deficits over the next decade, including a $600 billion increase in 2027, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Democrats uniformly oppose the spending package but have little power to stop it from becoming law if Republicans remain unified and work toward passage in the House by Memorial Day, a week away. Democrats call it as a giveaway to the rich paid for with cuts to health care and other services.

Republicans will look to get their massive tax cut and border security package back on track during a rare Sunday night committee meeting after that same panel — with five Republicans’ help — voted against advancing the measure two days earlier, a setback that Speaker Mike Johnson is looking to reverse quickly.

The Treasury secretary maintained that deficits would not be a problem because the economy would grow faster than the debt accumulation, reducing its increase as a size of the overall economy.

Most independent analyses are skeptical of the administration’s claims that it can achieve 3% average growth because Trump’s 2018 tax cuts failed to do so. The tax cuts from Trump’s first term did boost economic growth before the pandemic, but they also raised the budget deficit relative to previous estimates by the Congressional Budget Office.

On tariffs, the Trump administration is still trying to determine rates with about 40 major trading partners before a July deadline. It’s also in the early stages of a 90-day negotiation with China, after it agreed a week ago to reset tariffs on that country from 145% to 30% so that talks can proceed.

Uncertainty on tariffs has been a major drag for consumers and businesses trying to make spending plans. “Strategic uncertainty is a negotiating tactic,” Bessent said. “So if we were to give too much certainty to the other countries, then they would play us in the negotiations.”

Bessent appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and CNN’s “State of the Union.”