Matt Shay, National Retail Federation president and CEO, joins 'Money Movers' to discuss record holiday shopping sales, value-seeking consumers, tariff uncertainty, and more.

The National Retail Federation (NRF) forecasts that U.S. holiday retail sales will surpass $1 trillion for the first time in 2025, with projected growth between 3.7% and 4.2% over the previous year. NRF President and CEO Matt Shea highlighted record shopper turnout during key holiday periods, including nearly 160 million shoppers on the season's busiest Saturday and 203 million over Thanksgiving weekend.

Consumers are increasingly shopping across multiple channels, including online, mobile, and brick-and-mortar stores, as they seek deals and value. Despite ongoing economic uncertainty and tariff impacts, retailers have adapted with creative solutions, and industry leaders express a desire for greater predictability as they look ahead to 2026.

Holiday sales to surpass $1 trillion for first time in 2025: NRF

Welcome back to Money Movers. Retailers bracing for the final stretch of the holiday shopping season. This year is expected to be a record period for retail sales, according to the N.R.F., with spending expected to exceed a trillion dollars for the first time. N.R.F. also confirming that turnout this last Saturday likely hit a new high of nearly 160 million shoppers, exceeding the previous record in 2022. Joining us this morning is the president and CEO of the National Retail Federation, Matt Shea. Matt, welcome back. Good to see you again. Good to see you, Carl. Thank you. Happy holidays. Same to you. We've been checking in with you as the season has progressed. Any reason to think your forecasts have been thrown off track? Carl, we feel very good about the forecast of growth exceeding a trillion dollars for the first time ever, growth over last year between 3.7 and 4.2 percent. So I think we got off to a great start on Thanksgiving weekend, those five days, that holiday period. We know we had a record number of shoppers out, 203 million, which was really outstanding. There's always a little bit of a lull between Thanksgiving and the middle of December, close to the end of December. And we see a big pickup at the end, as we did this last weekend, Super Saturday. We had an extra day getting up to the Christmas holiday. So there's still some shopping to do. But even in early December, consumers were telling us they had more than half of their shopping remaining. So there was a lot left to do before the season ended. And we're still confident we're going to hit that number. Yeah, our viewers might be familiar with the historical spending trajectory. It kind of looks like Batman Ears or Double Top, where you get your Black Friday. And then there's, as you said, the period in between and then the final rush. Is brick and mortar holding up amid the growth of online? Yeah, I think what we're seeing, Carl, especially we see over this last weekend, is consumers are shopping across channels. So now they know they've only got a few days left. They're close to the end of the holiday season. They're looking for the special gift or for that particular deal or for the value. So they're going across channels and across brands. But they're online. They're on their mobile devices. They're in stores and kind of across all those devices and all those experiences. And we're seeing consumers, I think, respond to that very, very well and bring that to life for consumers so that they've got a range of options to try to find that gift before the season's over. Matt, this theme of the value seeking consumer is kind of happening at the same time where, of course, all the retailers have had to figure out exactly how they were going to navigate the tariff impact. And where does that leave your members? And are they able to get through this year and feel as if it's a kind of a cleaner slate into next year? Or, you know, does the remaining tariff uncertainty still stick with us? Yeah, Mike, I think the word uncertainty is maybe the definition of 2025. And certainly if we were talking back in April and May, I know I would have had a different expectation for the way the year was going to go on. I think consumers have been remarkably resilient throughout the uncertainty that's going on. And I think retailers have been really remarkably creative in delivering affordable, reasonable, you know, resourceful solutions for their consumers. And we're in a very different place now than we thought we might have been six or seven months ago. There's still lots of things we don't know about what might happen in 2026. And I think what I hear from the CEOs that I talk to and I talked to some this morning and over the weekend across industries, across segments, everyone would just like some certainty. We need a roadmap. We need guidance. We need predictability. As we get into 2026, highly complicated supply chains. It's very challenging to forecast demand in this environment. You're trying to operate very, very efficiently, deliver value for consumers. And consumers have enormous amounts of information now, lots of transparency out there. So it's a highly competitive, low margin business. And the uncertainty just makes it even more challenging. So I think we hope 2026, our wish for 26 is more certainty and predictability.

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