Brian Cornell says Target’s 2014 exit from Canada helped create room for later U.S. growth

Brian Cornell, who led Target for more than a decade before stepping aside as CEO, said the company’s 2014 exit from Canada was a turning point that helped set up growth back in the United States. Speaking in a conversation posted by Yahoo Finance, Cornell described the decision as the product of mounting financial losses and disappointing sales in Canada, concluding that staying in the market was no longer the right path.

Cornell’s account centers on the logic of admitting when a strategy is not working. Target entered Canada and expanded its presence, but by the time the company chose to pull back, Cornell said the financial picture had deteriorated and sales results were not meeting expectations. The exit, announced in 2015 and executed through store closures and brand wind-down efforts, became a high-profile corporate reset.

In the interview, Cornell framed the Canada decision as more than a retreat. He linked the exit to the ability to concentrate resources and management attention on the U.S. business. Without citing specific outcomes, Cornell argued that leaving Canada reduced distractions and helped clear room for a new phase of focus at Target, particularly as the company sought stronger performance stateside.

Cornell discussed the move in the context of leadership tradeoffs, according to the interview format. He was interviewed by Alan Murray, president of the WSJ Leadership Institute, and the conversation was published as a leadership-focused segment rather than a standard earnings discussion. That matters because it suggests the remarks were aimed at explaining the decision-making process, not updating investors with new financial guidance.