Walmart Raised a Price. Court Filings Say Amazon Asked.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta on Monday released a largely unredacted version of a preliminary injunction filing in the state’s 2022 antitrust case against Amazon, and the evidence inside it names Walmart repeatedly. According to the filing, Amazon sent Levi’s links to Walmart.com listings of Easy Khaki Classic fit pants priced between $25.47 and $26.99 and asked that the pricing “get resolved over the next few days.” Levi’s responded the next day that Walmart had partnered with the brand to take the product back up to $29.99 immediately, and Amazon then matched the higher price on its own site. The same filing describes Hanes confirming to Amazon that it had contacted Target and Walmart to push the prices up, and Allergan telling Amazon that Walmart had raised an eye drop SKU from $13.59 to $16.99 after a price match triggered a temporary suppression on Amazon.

Bonta’s office characterizes these exchanges as illustrative of a pattern spanning years and product categories, not isolated incidents. For anyone selling into Bentonville, the public record now shows that pricing decisions which appeared on Walmart.com were initiated by a conversation that took place inside the vendor, not inside Walmart.

The filing exposes a governance problem sitting inside the supplier, not the retailer

Walmart is not a defendant. Walmart told Retail Dive it does not comment on litigation in which it is not a party and reiterated that it works to keep prices low for customers. The company’s public posture is unchanged.

What has changed is the visibility of the internal mechanism. For 1P suppliers who sell to both Amazon and Walmart, the filing documents something that most merchant organizations have long suspected but could not prove: the same account team, or adjacent account teams inside the same brand, can be used to move a Walmart.com retail price in response to an Amazon request. In the Levi’s example, the conversation happened in days. Allergan’s price reset on Walmart happened fast enough that Amazon unsuppressed the buy box in the same email thread.

For a Walmart merchant running a line review, this creates a problem that did not have a name before Monday. When a supplier presents a cost increase or a retail price strategy, the merchant has historically taken the brand’s pricing rationale at face value, filtered through Retail Link data and competitive checks. The filing suggests a category of price movement that is neither a cost pass-through nor a competitive response to the market, but a coordination artifact arriving through the vendor. That category is now documented in a court record with named brands attached.

The state’s framing of these examples describes coordination between Amazon and its vendors, with competing retailers matching the resulting price movements. Suppliers should consider that the governance gap sits on their side. The coordination, as described in the public filing, happens inside the vendor organization, between an Amazon-facing team and a Walmart-facing team, with the Walmart retail price as the output.

The 1P and 3P exposures diverge sharply on this one

For 1P suppliers, the filing reads as a near-term governance and compliance matter. Legal and pricing leadership at any brand that sells to both Amazon and Walmart should expect merchant-side questions at the next JBP about how the brand separates its Amazon commercial conversations from its Walmart pricing inputs. Suppliers without a documented internal wall between the two are now carrying a risk they did not carry on Friday.

For 3P Marketplace sellers, the exposure is narrower but not zero. Most 3P sellers set their own Walmart.com prices directly, without a vendor-manager intermediary, which removes the specific mechanism the filing describes. Where the risk reappears is for 3P sellers who are also authorized resellers of branded goods governed by the brand’s Minimum Advertised Price policy. If a brand pulls its Walmart.com price up in response to an Amazon conversation, the MAP floor moves with it, and every authorized 3P seller of that SKU on Walmart.com is advertising at the new number whether they asked to or not. The 3P seller is downstream of the same coordination without being a party to it.

Amazon’s contested posture does not change what Walmart suppliers should do before July 23

Amazon disputes the state’s characterization. The company told Retail Dive that Bonta’s motion has a weak case and pointed to outside pricing studies identifying it as America’s lowest-priced online retailer. That defense will be litigated over the next several months. The hearing on the preliminary injunction is set for July 23, with a trial scheduled for January 2027. The July hearing will decide whether the conduct described in the filing can continue during the case.

For Walmart suppliers, the outcome of that hearing matters less than the fact of the filing itself. The specific emails are now in the public record. Levi’s, Hanes, and Allergan are named in exchanges that involve Walmart directly. The pattern of behavior is documented. A Walmart merchant preparing for a line review in Q3 now has a reference point for asking any branded vendor a question that would have felt impolite to ask in April: what is your process for ensuring that retail prices proposed for Walmart.com are developed independently of your Amazon account team’s input?

Brands that can answer that question cleanly, with a documented internal firewall and an audit trail, will find the conversation short. Brands that cannot will find it longer. The filing has created a supplier-side homework assignment with a de facto due date of the next quarterly review.

One detail from the filing is worth carrying into those conversations. The state alleges that Amazon trained employees to avoid email when discussing certain price match funding and channel activity, instructing them not to use email for those exchanges. If that allegation holds up in court, the written evidence released Monday understates the volume of coordination rather than overstating it. The visible record is the floor. The ceiling is whatever the next two quarters of merchant questions force into view.

Winning With Walmart

Winning With Walmart is an independent platform for suppliers, sellers, solution providers, and industry experts.

Articles are developed by staff editors, contributing experts, and trusted partners.

Some are researched and drafted with the assistance of AI tools and are reviewed, fact-checked, and edited by Winning With Walmart editors before publication.

Editorial judgment, sourcing decisions, and final approval rest with the publication's human editors in every case.

We are committed to accuracy and fairness. If you believe this article contains an error, we welcome your feedback.