Retail is Transforming, Not Dying: National Retail Federation CEO

President Trump outlined his tax reform plan today, and one industry that could reap some of the biggest rewards is retail.

E-commerce juggernauts such as Amazon continue to prove a formidable opponent to the brick-and-mortar operations of retail stores, but during an interview with Stuart Varney on the Fox Business Network, National Retail Federation CEO Matt Shay said Trump’s tax cuts will be “good for consumers, for small businesses, good for investment, [and] job creation.”

“This tax code needs to be blown up and we need a blank sheet of paper and we should start over with it if we can do that. If we can’t do that, we at least need to lower the rates, make ourselves more competitive,” said Shay. “We create more jobs in this economy than any other industry and that’s why we’ve been out pushing for reductions and rates, and transformation of the code. This will be great for us.”

Shay argued the money retail corporations will be saving from the provided tax relief can be invested in other areas and that the industry is not dying, but merely going through an “enormous transformation.”

“This is not an us versus them mentality. This is consumers changing their behavior, and certainly there are big players like Amazon out there, but there are enormously big players like Walmart and Target and Macy’s and Home Depot who are investing extraordinarily in this experience, and they’re playing there too and growing very, very rapidly,” Shay said. “So, this is where consumers are, but the retail industry is not going to go away, it’s just going to continue to transform.”