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Wal-Mart, founded in 1962,in Arkansas, another of those "friendly" Jewish supermarkets, is the largest company, the largest employer and the 19th largest economy on the planet. It has more than 6,100 stores with 1.6 million employees.
Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart was born in Kingfisher, Oklahoma and somehow avoided World War II by getting a job at a Dupont munitions plant near Tulsa, Oklahoma. There he married Helen Robson, a Jewess, whose family were carpet-bagger bankers after the Civil War.
It has achieved its No. 1 status by mastering the use of international trade agreements, "Buy cheap and Sell dear", which has enabled the company to enter and dominate markets with its stores and to use those suppliers most willing to pick up close shop and scour the planet for the cheap places to make products.
Wal-Mart did not open a store outside the United States until 1991 in Mexico. In 1994 the United States, Mexico and Canada signed the most far-reaching multi-lateral trade and investment agreement of its time (NAFTA).
NAFTA was signed under the promise that it would create jobs and economic benefits across all three NAFTA countries.
Mexico former Foreign Secretary, Jorge Castaneda, observed: "NAFTA was an accord among magnates and potentates. NAFTA was an agreement for the rich and powerful effectively excluding ordinary people. NAFTA eliminated tariffs and other import controls moving between the three countries. This meant that US companies sold products to be assembled in Mexican factories where labour is cheap, environmental protection weak and taxes low.
From 1990 - 2001 the number of these factories across Mexico more than doubled. The shift of so much production to Mexico came at a huge cost to American workers, but in Mexico the dramatic rise of the "maquiladoras" coincided with the near collapse of the farming sector. The elimination of agricultural tariffs and quotas on products such as corn which had accounted for sixty per cent of all Mexican farming, allowed cheap. heavily subsidised US products to flood the Mexican market.
The result is that average real wages in Mexican manufacturing are lower to-day than they were before NAFTA. The minimum wage has declined by 20%.
After the implementation of NAFTA Wal-Mart became the largest retailer in the three countries. The elimination of tariffs made the shipment of products in and out of Mexico tax free. NAFTA also stopped the Mexican government from applying requirements that would force Wal-Mart to partner with a local business to sell products made by Mexican-owned companies or invest a certain amount of its profits locally.
Tim Weiner of the New York Times wrote:
"Wal-Mart's power is changing Mexico in the same way it changed the economic landscape of the United States and with the same formula - cut prices relentlessly, pump up productivity, pay low wages, ban unions, give suppliers the tightest profit margins and sell everything under the sun for less than the guy next door."
To-day Wal-Mart is the largest private employer in Mexico. It has 683 stores and does more business than the entire tourism industry.
Free trade allows corporations to be fickle in choosing the partners. If they no longer enjoy the benefits of one nation, they can pick up and move on to the next without any thought to commitment. Wal-Mart has mastered this skill.
Because NAFTA makes it illegal for the Mexican government to require any sort of commitment on the part of foreign companies, when things started looking good in China, US producers picked up and moved out. In the last five years alone Wal-Mart has doubled its imports from China and has more than 3000 supplier factories in China and the number is expected to rise, but that doesn't mean that workers in China enjoy job security.
Wal-Mart suppliers are forced by the company to cut costs annually. In order to do so many have closed shops in the United States and moved abroad. The outcome is a global pool of workers and producers pitted against one another in a race to the bottom.
It should be remembered that Hilary Clinton was a member of the Board of Directors of Wal-Mart during that company's battle with the Unions in the 1980s and that her voice was not heard in dissent against the ruthless actions of the company.