Posted on 02/19/2005 6:55:57 AM PST by 1rudeboy
Those low-cost goods at Wal-Mart ultimately come at a high price: lost jobs, lower wages and unsupportable U.S. trade deficits.
Wal-Mart is the single largest importer of foreign-produced goods in the United States, and the majority of its private-label clothing is manufactured in at least 48 countries around the world—and almost none in the United States.
Wal-Mart’s biggest trading partner is China. The world’s largest retailer bought some $12 billion in merchandise in 2002, from China, nearly 10 percent of all Chinese goods sold in this country that year. Through November 2004, the United States was running a $147 billion trade deficit with China.
Lost Jobs Through Importing Foreign-Made Goods
Such a huge trade deficit undercuts domestic manufacturing and destroys good U.S. jobs because the nation is importing, on a large scale, products that had been produced domestically.
More than 80 percent of the 6,000 factories in Wal-Mart's worldwide database of suppliers are in China. If Wal-Mart were a separate nation, it would rank as China’s fifth-largest export market, ahead of Germany and Britain.
U.S. Jobs Shipped Overseas
Between 1989 and 2003, the ever-increasing U.S. trade deficit with China has led to about 1.5 million jobs that either moved overseas or never were created in this country as production shifted to China, according to a report released Jan. 11, 2005, by the U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC), a congressionally appointed panel. The pace of job losses has picked up since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, with about one-third of the total, or 500,000, occurring in the past three years.
Lower Wages for U.S. Workers
By supporting foreign-made goods on such a massive scale, the company that trumpets its All-American image is creating incentives for corporations to destroy good jobs in the United States.
As the world’s largest company with sales of $256 billion last year, Wal-Mart exerts a strong downward pressure on wages, and not only for its own workers. Its sheer size and buying power gives it the ability to influence wage rates of its competitors and suppliers, including manufacturing and construction companies.
Wal-Mart pressures its suppliers through a policy that says the price Wal-Mart will pay and will charge shoppers must drop each year for basic products that don't change. To survive in the face of the retail giant’s pricing demands, suppliers have had to lay off employees and close U.S. plants in favor of outsourcing products from overseas.
By purchasing such a large amount of goods produced in China, Wal-Mart indirectly supports continued workers’ rights abuses by Chinese authorities.
We have, for all practical purposes, eliminated our textile, furniture, consumer electronics, and small appliance industries. What American made products DOES Walmart sell?
We have, for all practical purposes, eliminated our textile, furniture, consumer electronics, and small appliance industries. What American made products DOES Walmart sell?
Potatoes
I suggest Government take-over...
If the AFL-CIO is against it, I'm for it.
Small potatoes?
Clearly, the federal government should command Wal-Mart what to buy and where.
Wal-Mart must be doing something right.
If you say so.
The auto industry was once a source (direct or indirect)of good wages for millions of American households.
Unions are one of the primary causes of outsourcing, so the AFL-CIO need only look at themselves.
In the areas I mentioned there are virtually no U.S. made products to be had so Walmart can't sell what isn't there even if it wanted to. We're at the mercy of Chinese suppliers.
So in other words, you're simply complaining.
We are lucky to have an auto industry left in the USA. If Reagan had not imposes traiffs and quota on Japan in the 80's Ford and GM likely would not have survived.
I suppose.
Let's see, the U.S. exported about 80 billion dollars worth of autos in 2003, about the lame level as 2000. Just another example of the devastation wrought by free(r) trade.
Yup, there is no turning back now, US labor an US manufacturing has been beaten and beaten badly. There are no US suppliers of must of what sells at Wal-mart. I have no idea of waht the US can build that can not be built better and cheaper in India or China of France. But we do have lots of farm land and forests so we can supply raw materials to the industrial nations of the world.
Why don't "they" just leave Wal-Mart alone? The mantra of "Wal-Mart is the bad guy" is getting kinda redundant & the charges don't stick.
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