“We are not satisfied with recent performance,” Target CEO Brian Cornell said in a statement Wednesday.

Multiple challenges descended on Target during the quarter that ended April 30, including the Trump administration’s trade war and a customer boycott over DEI changes. During a call Wednesday to discuss earnings, Cornell acknowledged that customer response to Target’s changes in its “belonging” policies, along with tariffs and ongoing shifts in consumer behavior, weighed on the retail chain’s financial results. Cornell expects those factors to affect earnings at least in the near term.

On the trade front, Target faces a whirlwind of logistical and financial challenges, like all retailers navigating the fast-changing landscape of President Donald Trump’s tariff policy. Target on Wednesday joined other companies in leaving the door open for price increases while it deals with what Chief Operating Officer Michael Fiddelke called an “ever-changing tariff landscape.”

Brands such as Walmart and Adidas have warned that the tariffs will force them to raise prices, while Home Depot has said it will try to keep them stable, albeit with a more limited selection. Trump recently lashed out at Walmart for signaling that it would increase prices to offset the impact of his tariffs.

Before the trade landscape turned volatile, Target’s annual revenue had already stagnated in the past few years, even as Walmart continued to do well. On the earnings call, Cornell acknowledged that Target has experienced several years of “pressure on our discretionary business” that is being compounded by the current economic outlook.

Early in the year, before DEI-related boycotts started, average daily visits to Target’s brick-and-mortar stores fell more than 4 percent by the end of February compared with the same period in 2024, according to Placer.ai. In contrast, Walmart’s daily visits climbed more than 7 percent overall during that period, though the company suffered occasional weekly declines.

Activists, Black civil rights figures and faith leaders began an “economic blackout” in late February of some major brands over a perceived retreat from DEI programs. Comparable store sales sank 5.7 percent year-over-year in the first quarter, Target said in its earnings report.

But of the many brands that have altered diversity, equity and inclusion policies to insulate themselves from the Trump administration and anti-DEI activists, Target has become the “poster child” for consumer blowback to that shift, according to Americus Reed, a professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

When classes resume in the fall, Reed plans to use Target as a case study on the risks and benefits of “companies building strong ideological stances into their brand identity.” Though many companies have pulled away from the sweeping social justice commitments made years ago, few had aligned their brands as much with these efforts as Target, he noted.

When other companies “were doing these things … they weren’t necessarily saying, ‘This is deeply infused into our DNA,’” Reed said. That’s probably why public reaction to Target is more elevated, he said, than it was to companies like Walmart, Google and Citigroup, which also ended such initiatives as workforce and supplier representation goals in the wake of Trump’s executive orders aimed at quashing DEI in the federal government, the private sector and academia.

“It’s unfortunate, but it’s the double-edged sword of what really good branding is all about,” Reed said.

Target was an early adopter of diversity efforts, starting its office of diversity and inclusion in 2003, and portrayed programs geared toward workforce and supplier representation as a key part of its business practices. The brand styled itself as an advocate and positioned itself as a partner to the Black community, according to Jarvis Sam, former chief DEI officer at Nike and founder of the Rainbow Disruption consultancy.

After George Floyd’s murder in 2020 in Minneapolis, where the retailer is headquartered, Target committed $10 million to “advance social justice” in local communities.

The same year, it launched its Racial Equity Action and Change initiative, which implemented anti-racism training for employees, prioritized hiring and promoting Black workers, and looked to grow the number of Black-owned businesses represented on Target shelves. In 2021, Target pledged to invest $2 billion in Black-owned businesses by the end of 2025 as part of the program.

These efforts are winding down this year, the retailer confirmed shortly after Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.

For a long time, Target “showed what quality DEI could look like,” for its workforce, business partners and consumers, Sam said. But he said he’s been disappointed by the “lack of maturity” Target has shown in response to consumers’ frustration with its DEI changes, including the lack of public acknowledgment of the boycotts and their effects on its business.

In a memo to staff this month, Target CEO Cornell acknowledged a “major mistake” but didn’t specify what exactly it was, according to reporting from the Minnesota Star Tribune.

Instead, he elliptically acknowledged that it had been a “tough few months” for Target, between the retail economy and “headlines, social media and conversations that may have left you wondering.”

“I recognize that silence from us has created uncertainty, so I want to be very clear: We are still the Target you know and believe in,” Cornell said in the email.

He didn’t mention his recent meeting with the Rev. Al Sharpton and Black faith leaders who organized the boycott after Target ended some DEI practices. Those same leaders plan protests outside Target stores on Sunday, the anniversary of Floyd’s murder.

“For Target, it unfortunately will remain this slippery slope,” Sam said. “When we don’t know what you stand for, we can’t come to terms with supporting you.”