And the horse Walmart rode in on

Sam Walton championed American factories. His heirs cheer Red China's.

Fortune magazine reported, “Walmart just leveled with Americans: China won’t be paying for Trump’s tariffs, in all likelihood you will.”

The story said:

Voters who returned Donald Trump to the Oval Office in hopes that living costs would return to the halcyon days before the pandemic may be in for a shock.

Arkansas-based Walmart, the world’s largest retailer that traditionally has catered to working- and middle-class Americans, warned the President-elect’s plans to hike import duties across the board will be felt by everyday consumers.

“Tariffs are going to be inflationary, there’s no disputing that,” Walmart finance chief John David Rainey told Fox News on Thursday.

That’s not the message the Trump campaign took to the nation during the 2024 election race, however. During the campaign, the former president asked whether voters were better off than they were a little less than five years ago, when the seeds of inflation were sown with the outbreak of covid-19.

The resounding answer was no, as two-thirds of the population were dissatisfied with the state of the economy. Coast to coast, Americans felt a deep-seated resentment at spiraling prices on everything from gasoline to groceries to restaurant visits.

The same dumb argument was made in Trump’s first term. Big business tells us that free trade creates jobs and tariffs hurt Americans. Corporate America never explains why all our factories are closed and the Midwest is dying.

If tariffs are as inflationary as Fortune and Walmart claim, then why was the annual inflation rate only 1.9% under President Trump even after he imposed tariffs on Red China?

Those tariffs were a large part of those halcyon days before the pandemic, as Forbes called that time. In fact, after attacking Trump’s tariffs, FJB not only kept those tariffs — he increased them.

CNN reported on September 13, “Biden finalizes increases to some of Trump’s China tariffs.”

Its story said:

The Biden administration said Friday that it has finalized tariff hikes on certain Chinese-made products that the president first announced in May.

The tariff rate will go up to 100% on electric vehicles, to 50% on solar cells and to 25% on electrical vehicle batteries, critical minerals, steel, aluminum, face masks and ship-to-shore cranes beginning September 27, according to the US Trade Representative’s Office.

Tariff hikes on other products, including semiconductor chips, are set to take effect over the next two years.

The administration’s increases — which impact a relatively small amount of US imports — come as Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have clashed over tariffs on the campaign trail. Trump is calling for sweeping new duties on all imports, while Harris has said that his proposal would raise prices on American households.

Trump implemented sweeping tariffs on about $300 billion of Chinese-made products when he was in office. President Joe Biden has kept those tariffs in place and, after the USTR finished a multiyear review earlier this year, decided to increase some of the rates on about $15 billion of Chinese imports.

Protecting American goods from foreign competition has been a staple of Republican economic policy since Lincoln. Reagan used them to save Harley-Davidson. As the story deftly pointed out, he did not use tweets — mainly because there was no Twitter back then. You cannot fool those razor-sharp minds at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

But there are Republicans who oppose tariffs. That is because they don’t know how economies work.

Forbes reported in 2018, “Ex-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Says Trump’s China Trade War Could Mean Long-Term Pain.”

Ah yes, Paulson was the principled man who refused to give Lehman Brothers a $50 billion bailout loan, which triggered quick recession, which took $750 billion in bailouts to fix.

Same panic. Same magazine. Same argument.

But this time, it will be different.

I do not know what Paulson got out of the deal for supporting Red China’s dominance of American manufacturing. I do know what Walmart gets: access to Red China’s market.

Some readers still may be unconvinced.

The Financial Times reported, “Top Biden adviser warns of ‘chaos’ if Trump raises tariffs and guts IRA.”

IRA is the Green New Deal disguised as the Inflation Reduction Act.

The Alliance for American Manufacturing reported, “Walmart China ‘firmly believes’ in local sourcing with over 95% of their merchandise coming from local sources. In America, estimates say that Chinese suppliers make up 70% to 80% of Walmart’s merchandise, leaving less than 20% for American-made products.

The retailer’s founder, Sam Walton, knew better. The New York Times reported on April 10, 1985:

“Sam M. Walton, the down-home Arkansas retail executive, is upset about the flood of imports, and he is aiming to do something about it.

“As the chairman of Wal-Mart Stores, a 753-unit discount chain that operates largely in rural communities, Mr. Walton, who Forbes has estimated to be worth more than $2 billion, sees his small-town customers losing their jobs as factories close because of imports.

In February, he wrote to 3,000 American manufacturers and wholesalers telling them that the chain wanted to buy more American goods. “Our continued success depends on our mutual reaction to a very serious problem with regard to our balance of trade deficit,” he said in the letter. Wal-Mart reports that so far it has written new orders with four suppliers as a result of the 66-year-old Mr. Walton’s appeal.

“What Wal-Mart is doing follows in the footsteps of Henry Ford,” proclaimed A. Gary Shilling, an economic consultant in New York. “Ford said that if you don’t pay your workers enough, they are not going to be able to buy Fords. Wal-Mart is saying that if you don’t buy the workers’ goods, they're not going to be able to buy your goods. It's all in Wal-Mart’s enlightened self-interest.”

Be American, buy American. Or is it the other way around?

The story quoted A. Robert Stevenson, vice president for corporate and public relations at Kmart, who said, “If you can buy domestically, we would much rather do that, but we’re looking for the best value for the customer.”

Walton’s plan worked. The 753-store giant in 1985 is now a 10,586-store behemoth.

Kmart? It still has 5 stores, down slightly from the 2,486 stores it had 30 years ago.

With Sam gone, Walmart has adopted Kmart’s philosophy. In losing its hyphen, Walmart lost its soul. It now is about as American as downtown Beijing.

Tariff them all and if Walmart wants to pass the cost on down to its customers, well, there is always Dollar General or maybe even Amazon.

Or I can adopt the philosophy of asking, if it is not made in America, do I really need the product? I am doing just fine without Bud Light.