The trend: While Memorial Day promotions aren’t as early as last year’s Halloween-and-Christmas creep, several major retailers have launched deals at least a week ahead of the holiday.

• Amazon features up to 35% off national brands across sports, outdoor, patio, furniture, fashion, beauty, appliances, and electronics, plus Prime-member exclusives.
• Best Buy offers a broad range of technology discounts—TVs, laptops, headphones, cameras, smartwatches—alongside up to 50% off major appliances.
• Home Depot’s sale—which runs through Wednesday, May 28—features deals on outdoor lighting, soil, plants, grills, and garden tools.
• Walmart is marking down everything from laptops to grills.

Sooner rather than later: Shoppers feel pressure to buy before tariffs push prices higher.

• The average effective US tariff rate is 17.8%, the highest since 1934, per the Yale Budget Lab.
• Consumers expect inflation to stay elevated: One-year-ahead expectations sit at 3.6%, and three-year expectations just climbed to 3.2%—the highest since July 2022, according to the New York Fed’s Survey of Consumer Expectations.

Early Memorial Day deals are less about retail hype this year and more about consumers racing the clock on rising costs.

Our take: Limited-time discounts will likely unlock spending from cost-conscious shoppers—giving retailers a much-needed boost in an uneasy economic climate.