Walmart is the biggest company on the Fortune 500 but its gigantic revenues might not be enough to fend off President-elect Donald Trump.
Chris Malone, a management consultant at Fidelum, told CNBC on Monday that there’s a good chance Trump will go after the retail giant—as it has been scrutinized for its labor practices in recent years, CNBC reports.
“An easy target for him are those companies that are holding down the hours of their part-time employees to avoid paying them benefits,” Malone said. “He could put some real pressure on Walmart (WMT) to step up and do the right thing—reduce the burden on taxpayers for health-care coverage.”
As for other “easy targets,” Malone also said the President-elect maybe go after the government-contracted consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH).
“Ninety-seven percent of their revenue comes from government contracts. The NSA is their largest client… Donald Trump will have a lot of leverage to extract concessions out of Booz Allen given their track record and his emphasis on cybersecurity,” Malone said.
However, companies like Starbucks (SBUX) and Tesla (TSLA) are “Trump-proof,” according to Malone, meaning the President-elect may have a harder time implementing his ideas at those companies.
Instead, Malone thinks Trump would be better off “earning respect, gaining some support from Elon Musk,” the auto-makers’ CEO.
“They’ve created a lot of jobs in the United States already,” he added.
As for Starbucks (SBUX), Malone said that the company is a “model citizen of the United States as an employer, paying benefits for their part-time employees, high wages, even education assistance,” adding that he doubts Trump’s ability to “leverage very much pressure” on the coffee giant.
Trump may have a little more success at tech companies like Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN), though. Malone told CNBC he thinks the President-elect may be able to gain “minor concessions,” with those two companies. However, with the amount of visibility that both Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos each have, along with their “large, loyal” following, that target may be a tougher one to tackle, he noted.
