As Walmart continues its effort to help boost the American manufacturing sector, the retailer has released a report that looks at the challenges and opportunities as it pertains to making a variety of products domestically.
Walmart’s “Policy Roadmap to Renew U.S. Manufacturing” highlights a host of topics including barriers to manufacturing growth, how to lead change, workforce, coordination and financing, regulation and tax and trade.
“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 vp/U.S. sourcing and manufacturing. “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.”
According to analysis conducted by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), 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, potentially resulting in the creation of an estimated 1.5 million American jobs.
The analysis, which laid the foundation for the policy roadmap, leveraged BCG’s expertise in economic policy and manufacturing along with Walmart’s sourcing data and included interviews with merchants, suppliers and other policy experts.
“Enhancing U.S. manufacturing is a top priority of mine,” said U.S. Representative Tom Reed, who serves as co-chair of the House Manufacturing Caucus. “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.”
According to Walmart, the roadmap details 10 policy actions that can be taken to address these barriers and goes a step further to suggest the appropriate entities, including federal, state, and local governments, manufacturers, and businesses, that must collaborate on those policy actions to affect meaningful change that will unlock greater growth and job creation in domestic manufacturing of consumer goods.
“It’s important to note that there is no silver bullet that will solve the problem on its own. The barriers to domestic manufacturing are just too broad and too complex,” said Dustin Burke, a partner in BCG’s manufacturing practice. “The purpose of Walmart’s Policy Roadmap to Renew U.S. Manufacturing is to provide a framework for collaboration among key stakeholders and highlight 10 actionable policy levers that, taken together, can help strengthen U.S. manufacturing and significantly reduce long-term unemployment.”
