I got the bulk of this information from watching PBS - Frontline: Is Walmart Good for America?
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Walmart/China 36 USA 3
We lost that one.
In the Port of Long Beach California alone Walmart/China imports into the US, 36 billion dollars a year of consumer products such as machinery, shoes, toys, and clothing.
The USA exports 3 billion dollars a year of raw materials like cotton and gets back clothing. Exports hides and gets back shoes. Exports scrap metal and gets back machinery. Exports containers of waste paper and gets back cardboard boxes with products inside
We had a 120 billion dollar trade deficit with China last year.
We bought into a myth of an enormous and growing China market. Problem was that Americans had income, Chinese consumers don't.
Circleville Ohio is a small community whose main source of livelyhood was consumer electronics. Thomson in 1999 produced about 10 million pieces for TV's and employed 1000 workers in this small town. Good manufacturing jobs. Paying workers 50K or so per year. In 2003 they lost the Sanyo contract because Walmart cut prices forcing Sanyo (who bought glass from Thomson in Circleville) to move to a Chinese supplier.
Last May Thomson shut the Circleville Ohio plant down. Walmart on the other hand is building a store next door....you can make 8 bucks an hour with crappy benefits vs. the 16 bucks Thomson paid.
Five Rivers a maker of high end big screen TV's, is a good supplier of American jobs located in Greenville Tennessee. They brought a suit against TCL/China for dumping high end TV's below cost in the US. Walmart fought against Five Rivers essentially supporting the export of those Greenville jobs to China. Five Rivers won the case.
Brink Lindsey thinks Walmart is good for America. They provide cheap consumer goods that customers want to buy.
Problem is we are not just consumers we are workers who need to earn a living wage. I venture to guess Brink Lindsey didn't grow up in a town like Circleville Ohio where the main source of living wage jobs was exported to China.
Without living wage jobs in the USA we won't be able to purchase things regardless of where they were manufactured.
It would be worth considering the mentality that more and cheaper is best and we can "free trade" our way to success.
Assume somehow we raise the level of income worldwide to somehow approximate that of the average worker in the U.S.
The planet will not sustain the American level of affluenza. It will not be possible to export the American consumer model to the rest of the world. Earth will not sustain that kind of growth model. Most of the items we are talking about are heavily dependent on petro-chemicals; plastics, fertilizers, fuel...all come from petroleum.
Many of the items we are talking about in the consumer electronics world are not recyclable.
Two things are immediately wrong with that model - (a) not enough oil and (b) burning that oil..assuming the rest of the world gets into the American one car per/person mode accelerates pollution and global warming.
I don't know what the answer to this is. I do think it's ludicrous to say that we are losing some high wage jobs but it's a net wash, because they are being replaced by "knowlege worker" jobs or some other non-manufacturing "thinking", "marketing" kind of occupation.
Fact of the matter is there are people who are best suited to manufacturing type jobs. Not everyone wants to, can, or should; be what is popularly called a "knowledge worker". I take that term "knowledge worker" to mean someone whose occupaton is in the mode of the BASF slogan, "we don't make a lot of the products you buy we make a lot of the products you buy better." or maybe "we don't make a lot of the products you buy, we sell them". Problem is not everyone can be a salesman.
Probably aren't going to make Will who makes parts using a lathe into Will the guy from marketing. Nor would we want to.
Complex stuff, no easy answers. Probably the best you can do is make sure you and your children are educated and flexible, willing and ready to work in a global economy. No amount of protectionism or ranting is going to stop this train.
I still don't think Walmart is good for America. But so what? You think their bottom line will be impacted. Hellll no. In their world they are doing us a favor by providing us cheap goods (thereby in their words - raising our standard of living). I guess the Walmart definiton of the good life is how much crap you have collected. I sort of doubt if the parking lot at our local Walmart will be any less full tomorrow.
