Making It in America: The Almost Impossible Quest to Manufacture in the U.S.A. (And How It Got That Way)

by Rachel Slade

By the mid-1990s, there were only a few major underwear buyers left in America, and the biggest was Walmart, which had just about finished off Kmart. Once Kmart was vanquished (the company shuttered 110 stores in 1994), Walmart set out to shut down every other lower-market retailer in America. How? By using the same tactics it had employed to crush Kmart: sell impossibly cheap goods. Offer staple merchandise at prices so low, consumers can’t resist and other retailers can’t compete. In one of the most vicious maneuvers in American history, Walmart spread like a fungus across America, draining every dollar out of Main Street. The new monopolists had argued that America’s antitrust laws should focus on consumer pricing instead of company size to determine whether or not to break up a monopoly or block an acquisition. But the price of a good is just one economic metric. Monopolists can pledge to keep prices low to avert an antitrust case. But who pays the collateral? In the case of Walmart, the manufacturers. Who, by the way, employed millions of Americans. Consumers were saving money, so according to an extremely narrow reading of antitrust law, Walmart was left alone to do its thing. By 2010, Walmart had a de facto “complete monopoly” over retail in smaller cities, and delivered at least 30 percent, and sometimes more than 50 percent, of the entire U.S. consumption of products. As of 2022, Walmart is the largest company on earth, with nearly 20 percent more revenue than Ama...