BENTONVILLE, ark. — The group cheer at Walmart’s third annual U.S. manufacturing summit — convened to find more American-made products — was greeted with a voice from another era.
“Almost anything can be made by Americans, in this country, and be done efficiently,” founder Sam Walton said in a grainy black-and-white video clip from the 1980s, explaining Walmart’s mission to buy more products at home.
Ultimately, Walton failed. Critics blamed Walmart’s insistence on low costs for driving the U.S. supply chain to China, where massive factories and cheap labor overwhelmed American rivals.
Now Walmart is trying to revive the U.S. manufacturing base. The company is two years into a 10-year plan to buy $250 billion more in products from American factories. Walmart is hyping its effort, which comes as it struggles with flagging sales and labor strife. Skeptics say it’s just a glitzy public relations stunt.
This time, though, the retailer might break though where its founder, who died in 1992, couldn’t. Advances in technology and a rising standard of living in China help. Walmart originally used its gargantuan scale to send supply chains overseas; it can now redirect that purchasing power into hauling them back onshore.
“This is a way for them to save money. This is at the core of Walmart’s mission,” says Darrell Rosen, who heads a Bentonville consultancy for Walmart suppliers.
