Walmart's Latest Scheme to Replace the Middle Class with an Underclass Forced to Buy Its Shoddy Goods

By Stacy Mitchell
Almost 30 years ago, as the U.S. was bleeding jobs, Walmart launched a "Buy America" program and started hanging "Made in America" signs in its 750 stores.  It was a marketing success, cementing the retailer's popularity in the country's struggling, blue-collar heartland.  A few years later, NBC's Dateline revealed the program to be a sham.  Sure, Walmart was willing to buy U.S.-made goods - so long as they were as cheap as imports, which, of course, they weren't.  Dateline found that Walmart's sourcing was in fact rapidly shifting to Asia.

This year, Walmart is back with a new "Buy America" program.  In January, the company announced that it would purchase an additional $50 billion worth of domestic goods over the next decade.  This week, Walmart is convening several hundred suppliers, along with a handful of governors, for a summit on U.S. manufacturing.

This sounds pretty substantial, but in fact it's just a more sophisticated and media savvy version of Walmart's hollow 1980s Buy America campaign.  For starters, $50 billion over a decade may sound huge at first, but measured against Walmart's galactic size, it's not.  An additional $5 billion a year amounts to only 1.5 percent of what Walmart currently spends on inventory.

Worse, very little of this small increase in spending on American-made goods will actually result in new U.S. production and jobs.  Most of the projected increase will simply be a byproduct of Walmart's continued takeover of the grocery industry.  Most grocery products sold in the U.S. are produced here.  As Walmart expands its share of U.S. grocery sales - it now captures 25 percent, up from 6 percent in 1998 - it will buy more U.S. foods.  But this doesn't mean new jobs, because other grocers are losing market share and buying less.  What it does mean is lower wages.  As I reported earlier this year, Walmart's growing control of the grocery sector is pushing down wages throughout food production.    

Sweatshops at Sea: Most of Our Goods Arrive Via Ships Where Seafarers Labor in Unfair and Dangerous Conditions

By Stan Cox

Late last year, the Danish shipping giant AP Moller Maersk announced robust third-quarter profits of $2.25 billion. To get the good word out, the company's chief operating officer sent a message to his crews aboard ships around the world, inviting them to join him in celebration by having a piece of traditional Danish lagkage, a kind of cream cake.

Mark Dickinson, head of the Nautilus International seafarers' union, scoffed at the boss's invitation, comparing it to French monarch Marie Antoinette's infamous "let them eat cake" comment. Noted Dickinson, "The profits have been achieved on the back of job losses for highly skilled and experienced personnel, and cuts in operating costs that have left some ships with food budgets that would barely run to covering the costs of cooking cream cakes."

The United States is no longer a major seafaring nation, but we have become increasingly dependent on the volatile global shipping industry. Cargo vessels registered in the United States and Canada account for only 1 percent of global shipping capacity; however, a far larger share of world cargo traffic moves to or from our ports. North America laps up 27 percent of all oil traded internationally, and one of every five filled shipping containers worldwide is headed either away from or (more often) toward the United States. And to help reduce our trade deficit, 44 percent of all grain entering international trade is shipped from a U.S. port.