Walmart Presents A Ten-Point Plan To Renew U.S. Manufacturing

Walmart announced news on Wednesday (July 26) that it had convened a broad group of individuals and organizations from the government, business and non-governmental sectors to lobby for a Policy Roadmap to Renew U.S. Manufacturing.

In a press release detailing the effort, the retailer said the meeting included a bipartisan conversation about the current challenges and opportunities in the American manufacturing sector as well as case studies of successful collaboration among different players.

“As we’ve worked over the last four years alongside our suppliers toward our goal to source an additional $250 billion in products that support American jobs, we’ve learned a great deal about the challenges our suppliers face in domestic manufacturing,” said Cindi Marsiglio, Walmart vice president for U.S. sourcing and manufacturing, in the press release. “The good news is we’ve also learned how to overcome the challenges and, because of our experience, Walmart is uniquely positioned to help facilitate broad engagement in accelerating the expansion of U.S. manufacturing.”

Citing an analysis by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Walmart said decreasing policy barriers to domestic manufacturing creates an opportunity to recapture approximately $300 billion in consumer goods that are currently imported, including furniture, cookware and sporting goods. The retailer argued that could potentially result in the creation of an estimated 1.5 million jobs being added in the U.S.

Walmart’s Policy Roadmap to Renew U.S. Manufacturing identifies the highest impact policy barriers as workforce, coordination and financing, regulation and tax and trade and highlights for specific policies that have the potential to effectively accelerate and grow manufacturing in the U.S. The roadmap details 10 concrete policy actions that can be taken to address these barriers and goes a step further to lobby the appropriate entities — including federal, state and local governments, manufacturers and businesses — that must collaborate on those policy actions to effect meaningful change that will unlock greater growth and job creation in domestic manufacturing of consumer goods.

“Enhancing U.S. manufacturing is a top priority of mine,” said U.S. Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.), who serves as co-chair of the House Manufacturing Caucus, in the same press release. “Manufacturing is an advancing field where new technologies will open doors to job creation and economic growth. We must work together to remove barriers so that we are more competitive and good paying jobs are once again created right here in the United States.”