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Not Made in America, Wal-Mart Looks Overseas For Online Vendors (reuters.com)
Walmart.com, trailing Amazon.com in the number of goods for sale on its website, is recruiting vendors in China and other countries to boost its online offerings in a pivot away from Wal-Mart's Made-in-America campaign. From a report: While there is a financial incentive behind the move, Wal-Mart's decision comes out of necessity: not all the goods its customers want -- ranging from jeans to bicycles to beauty products -- are manufactured within the United States. That reality pits Wal-Mart against President Donald Trump's "Made in America" push. It also risks alienating some of Wal-Mart's existing U.S. vendors since it runs counter to the American-made pledge the retailer made in 2013 in a bid to win customers, and satisfy unions and other critics who said its drive for low cost goods was undermining American jobs. According to two sources with knowledge of the matter, Wal-Mart Stores in February began inviting sellers from China, the United Kingdom and Canada to list on the marketplace section of Walmart.com, where it earns a share of revenue from goods sold and delivered to customers by third-party vendors.
You must be joking.
Wal-mart hasn't been about "made in America" since the last century at least. THEY are the ones pushing companies to cut prices at any cost and outsource manufacturing to China to begin with.
They are the LAST place I would go looking for stuff made in the US. They try to drive those kinds of companies out of business.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
There are a number of things to consider.
There are some tasks that just doesn't make sense for America to do anymore.
This is correct; however,
It is just trying to find people willing to do that particular work. Kids today are not looking for manufacturing jobs. The manufacturing jobs in America are for higher cost items, because these jobs require people with real skills to build.
That isn't.
The Chinese are fantastically-skilled manufacturers. They have the capacity to produce the highest-quality goods--or any quality of goods--at the lowest cost in terms of labor (hours), not just in terms of wage-labor (wages x labor).
People economize. People want to expend ('spend) the least means for the greatest ends. In other words: they want to get things as cheap as they can. Less work, less money, less whatever from them, more of what they want to them.
Americans, thus, have a huge demand for the lowest-price goods they can get. To American business, that doesn't just mean outsourcing to cheap Chinese labor; it means paying the Chinese half as much to make a low-quality good when they could damned well get a high-quality good that no American manufactory could ever produce at a reasonable price at any quality level. People don't want a $36 electric can-opener that their grandchildren will inherit; they want a $19 can-opener that they'll replace in 5 years with a fancier model for some unfathomable reason (this one cuts from the side to produce no sharps on the lid--just on the can!).
Do you know why there are no manufacture jobs to make can openers in America?
Because you can't pay American workers. Nobody's buying the product for $100 (the American wage is higher, after all); and the Americans can't make it as well as the Chinese, besides. You don't have a revenue stream. Those jobs don't exist because of lack of demand.
Trade advantage. We're richer because we get the same products cheaper.
This 5% unemployment isn't going away; it'll spike in the next recession, and then recede to around 5% again. We're at 4.7% now and we're not going to see 3%, although we might be able to squeeze a bit more out if we can go expending peoples's savings (notably, the huge savings of venture capitalists) to create unsupportable jobs and start-ups that will eventually collapse as the rich-people money runs out.
We're not going to see permanent 10% unemployment or permanent 3% unemployment; we're not losing jobs to China. Oddly enough, manufacturing e.g. pants in America instead of China would decrease total American jobs: we lose the retail, shipping, and other support jobs that are based purely on volume of goods (a retail cashier scans 980 items per hour; a 40-foot trailer carries 20,000 pairs of pants) when the American factories crank out expensive goods. People can afford fewer of those high-priced goods, after all; and the American factory worker can't spend his money until he's earned his money, so it ticks around like a clock (in a computer, synchronizing the pipeline).
Theoretically, 178,000 Chinese workers (40-hour week) supply all the import men and boys's cotton trousers and shorts America buys; there are 158,000,000 working Americans. "The money stays in America" only means it goes to those 178,000 Americans--theoretically. When the money can't buy as much, it goes to fewer Americans--say 59,000 (3x as expensive). Those Americans can't offset the loss of purchasing power of the other 158,000,000, and so less is purchased in total, less is moved and retailed, and many of those others lose their jobs.
Why can't Americans buy so many pants when pants cost $30 or $50 instead of $15? Because the American worker must work twice as long to earn that wage!
Finally, there's this:
Putting workers pay and working conditions aside.
Chinese wage and social insurances were
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