“””Walmart went national in the early ‘90s, just as Bill Clinton became president. Coincidence or no. Walmart probably didn’t need an Arkansan in the WH, but it probably didn’t hurt.”””
By the time Clinton took office, Walmart was the nation’s # 1 retailer and was in at least 45 states and many countries.
I know, but I meant something different. In 1990, when it was the largest retailer by revenue, it still wasn’t national in the way I meant. I’m from the Northeast, and my city had no stores then. We’d only heard of Walmart. As the Wikipedia article says:
“Prior to the summer of 1990, Walmart had no presence on the West Coast or in the Northeast (except for a single Sam’s Club in New Jersey which opened in November 1989), but in July and October that year, it opened its first stores in California and Pennsylvania, respectively. By the mid-1990s, it was the most powerful retailer in the U.S. and expanded into Mexico in 1991 and Canada in 1994.[44] Walmart stores opened throughout the rest of the U.S., with Vermont being the last state to get a store in 1995.[45]”
My city got several stores in a short span during the early ‘90s, and that’s when Walmart became “the most powerful” and dominant retailer in the nation.
So that’s what I mean. The national business conquest of Walmart (when we’d say we became a “Walmart nation,” generally coincided with Bill Clinton becoming president, and NAFTA agreement too. Then the WTO in 1995 as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart#1990%E2%80%932005:_Retail_rise_to_multinational_status
“Walmart Growth Map Animated in R: Watch the growth and spread of Walmart across the US in an animated map using ggplot2 in R and ffmepg.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adm3RB4ieXU