The escalating decrease of American-made products available to consumers in US retail stores is at epidemic proportions. In fact, American-made products are disappearing from the US marketplace at such an alarming rate that prime time television recently explored the topic.
While research about the growing decrease in homegrown American goods may offer several factors as the cause, author Charles Hood attributes the real root of the problem to one source—retail goliath Wal-Mart.
In Wal-Mart’s EGOnomics—Always—The Greed Behind the Smiley Face, Hood’s Five-Star-awarded book explores a behind-the-scenes look at how America’s largest retailer conducts business. “It is not a pretty picture,” says Hood, whose retail-service company ADDvantage Media Group, Inc. (AMG) was destroyed at the hands of Wal-Mart executives after AMG was a partner/vendor with Wal-Mart for seven years.
“There seems to be a reluctance to point fingers in any direction about the major reason products made in America AND American jobs are disappearing,” says Hood. “But fingers need to be pointed, and they need to be pointed at Wal-Mart for its total disregard for America and the sale of American-made products.”
“Reportedly, today over 90 percent of the products Wal-Mart sells are manufactured in foreign facilities,” Hood explains. “If the products Wal-Mart buys are not purchased directly from foreign sources, they are purchased from the many American companies that were forced to begin manufacturing their products in foreign countries, in order to compete in today’s market.
“This is a problem that was initiated not recently, but the day Sam Walton opened the doors of his very first store,” says Hood. “Unfortunately for America, Wal-Mart’s dishonorable tactics have allowed its growth to out-strip that of all other retailers, and in so doing they are perhaps the single greatest contributor to the ugly state of the American economy today.”
“This is not an idle statement based solely...