It’s safe to say: Wal-Mart likes to buy from anywhere but America.
The retail behemoth’s “Buy America program” has become a “Buy China” program that makes Wal-Mart and China stronger while weakening America.
Wal-Mart demands forced 14 top suppliers - including Hasbro, Fruit of the Loom, and Proctor & Gamble - to cut approximately 17,000 U.S. manufact
uring jobs between 2001 and 2006. Thousands of these jobs were shipped to China. In 2006, Wal-Mart rewarded these same 14 suppliers with its “Supplier of the Year” award.
Last year, Wal-Mart brought $26.7 billion of Chinese goods into the United States and cost American workers more than 300,000 jobs. That’s about 77 jobs for every Wal-Mart store in the United States.
These calculations come from two separate reports released by Change to Win and the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). The findings are published in a new EPI issue brief out this week, The Wal-Mart Effect and a new Change to Win report, Wal-Mart Locks In China, Locks Out American Workers.
Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton believed that Wal-Mart could help “restore [U.S.] manufacturing capacity improve our national economy and renew our pride in American craftsmanship.”
But Wal-Mart claims it’s not an American company anymore: “We’re a global company and it is necessary to source globally to ensure that we meet the needs and wants of our customers,” says Wal-Mart spokesman David Tovar.
Today, China is the source for more than 70 percent of Wal-Mart’s U.S. merchandise.
At Wal-Mart stores in China, Canada, Mexico and England the story is very different.
- Wal-Mart buys 99% of the goods sold in its Chinese stores in China.
- Wal-Mart buys 80% of all the goods sold in its Canadian stores in Canada.
- Wal-Mart buys 93% of the merchandise sold in its Mexican stores from suppliers based in Mexico.
- In the U.K., Wal-Mart/Asda recently announced a major, “campaign to boost the beleaguered British clothing industry,” by “stocking an entire range of clothing made exclusively in the U.K."