How do major retailers’ political donations compare—Target vs Walmart, Amazon, and Kroger—regarding Trump-aligned groups?

1. The headline donations: Target, Amazon and Walmart

Federal filings made the clearest comparison possible: Target and Amazon each reported $1 million to Trump’s 2025 inaugural committee, and Walmart reported $150,000 to that same committee, a payment Walmart has historically made for multiple inaugurations, including ones for other presidents, according to corporate and media disclosures ^{[1] [2]}.

2. Kroger’s role is quieter on the national inaugural stage

Unlike Target, Amazon and Walmart, Kroger does not surface in the cited national reports as a major donor to the 2025 inauguration; reportage and industry trackers instead identify Kroger as politically active primarily through PAC spending and employee-level donations rather than a large one-off inaugural contribution in the public filings cited here ^{[4] [5]}.

3. PACs, employees and the “company” versus individuals distinction

Any straightforward comparison must start with the legal and practical distinction that companies as entities cannot directly give to federal candidates; most political dollars linked to corporations flow from PACs, executives, or employees, and some line items attributed to firms in public lists are actually donations from people affiliated with those firms — a nuance highlighted by fact-checkers and OpenSecrets’ methodology ^{[3] [6]}. For example, broader retail-industry PAC activity shows Walmart’s PAC has significant contributions across the aisle and has been a major donor to Democrats in recent cycles, underscoring that corporate political engagement often spans parties and mechanisms ^[4].

4. Patterns beyond the inauguration: partisan mix and employee swings

Data tracking employee donations shows variation across retailers: Target employees swung heavily toward Democrats in the 2020 cycle but still registered donations to Trump in absolute terms, while Walmart and Kroger have been described as “purple” or mixed, with PACs and individuals giving to both parties depending on the year and issue, meaning a single corporate check (like an inaugural gift) sits alongside a more complex pattern of partisan giving from people connected to these firms ^{[5] [6]}.

5. Optics, corporate defenses and interest-driven narratives

Companies that made inauguration contributions framed their engagement as part of routine access to policymakers or continuity with past practices; Target’s corporate materials emphasize bipartisan engagement, noting it works with officials from all parties and runs a voluntary employee-funded PAC, while critics and consumer groups emphasize the political implications and use such contributions to justify boycotts — revealing competing agendas between corporate risk-management and activist pressure ^{[7] [8] [9]}.

6. What the numbers do — and do not — prove

The available reporting proves that Target and Amazon each made a large, publicly reported $1 million inaugural donation and Walmart made a smaller, recurring $150,000 payment, while Kroger’s public profile on that specific front is far lower; however, those sums do not capture the full universe of “Trump-aligned” influence (super PACs, lobby funding, individual executive donations, or in-kind support), and fact-checkers caution against treating lists that attribute political behavior to “companies” as if the entity itself independently chose a partisan stance ^{[1] [2] [3]}.

7. Bottom line for readers parsing “which retailer sided with Trump”

If the metric is high-profile, corporate inaugural donations, Target and Amazon stand out for their $1 million gifts, Walmart a distant third at $150,000, and Kroger is not prominent in that narrow comparison; if the metric broadens to PAC flows and employee donations, the picture fragments into mixed partisan activity and longstanding, sometimes bipartisan, engagement that each company can — and will — interpret differently for reputation and regulatory purposes ^{[1] [2] [4] [5]}.