You're confusing politics and economics. The strength and guiding principle of a free market system is every working toward their own best self-interest. That is what Wal-Mart does along with every other company in the nation. Quite literally, that's their job.
Politics, such as it is, should keep certain aspects of the free market system in check. For instance, certain business practices are illegal, such as insider trading, killing the competition, and minimum wage, etc.
No, I'm not confusing politics and economics. I know that Politics is being used to force and economic result on America. And we're not debating the "free market" system. We're debating the resultant damage from trade when vastly unequal wage/labor cost & cost of living systems compete directly with one another. Without some means of leveling the playing field for competition, there cannot be anything calling itself "fair" competition. If you put a guy with no legs on the cinders with a guy that has two good legs in the olympics (no prosthetics on the guy without legs) you would probably get a riot due to the cruelty. You do it in economics and then act like it should be accepted as normal when everyone else can see the inequity and bold/flagrant
immorality of the act.
We have a capitolist market that functions on supply and demand. That works equitably when established in a moral setting. It is abusive when there is no moral grounding - ie the slave trade history. So, let's not act as though it's a simple misunderstanding of what we're discussing.
It isn't. Tariffs level the playing field to make competition fair. Without the tariffs, there is no way of leveling the playing field. But with the tariffs, there is no "free" trade. The only reason there is "free" trade is because Corporate America doesn't like supply and demand when labor supply causes them to have to compete for the best available labor at market cost. They want market profit without market cost. The only way to do that legally is to subvert the labor market and remove any advantage the labor market can have by means of quality/supply and cost.
Without tariffs, foriegn labor cannot be beat - no two ways about it.. because their cost of living is lower, their labor cost is lower, etc.
So, again, no, I'm not confusing politics with economics. I'm just aware that politics has been used here to subvert American economics to the benefit of large corporations and to the very large detriment of the average American. It is Walmart's job to do the best they can do. When that extends to Using foriegn labor to subvert the American market for profit, they've crossed the line and acted like a King we rebelled against. And that isn't their job..
Funny you should state that killing competition should be illegal and policed by the politicos via legislation. Their legislation on trade hasn't merely killed competition, it nullified it and completely subverted our market. Who polices the police?