Title: The Wal-Mart effect: Its Chinese imports have displaced nearly 200,000 U.S. jobs | Economic Policy Institute
Headings: The Wal-Mart effect
The Wal-Mart effect
:
Its Chinese imports have displaced nearly 200,000 U.S. jobs
Issue Brief #235
China trade and U.S. job loss
Wal-Mart’s role
Conclusion
Endnotes
References

Content: Wal-Mart alone is responsible for the loss of nearly 200,000 U.S. jobs due to its own growing trade deficits with China. The current unbalanced U.S.-China trade relationship is bad for both countries, and Wal-Mart has played a major role
in creating that imbalance. The United States is piling up foreign debt, losing export capacity, and facing a more fragile macroeconomic environment. Meanwhile, China has become dependent on the U.S. consumer market for employment generation, has suppressed the purchasing power of its own middle class with a weak currency, and, most importantly, has held hundreds of billions of hard-currency reserves in low-yielding, risky assets, instead of investing them in public goods that could benefit Chinese households. China has purchased more than $1 trillion in U.S. Treasury bills and other government securities in recent years in order to artificially and illegally hold down the value of its currency, and thereby lower the cost of its exports to the United States and other countries. It has repressed the labor rights and wages of its workers, making its exports artificially cheap, further subsidizing its exports. Wal-Mart has aided China’s abuse of labor rights and its violations of internationally recognized norms of fair trade behavior by providing a vast and growing conduit for the distribution of artificially cheap and subsidized Chinese exports to the United States. The U.S. relationship with China needs fundamental change: addressing the exchange rate policies and labor standards issues in the Chinese economy are important national priorities. Wal-Mart’s huge reliance on Chinese imports illustrates that many powerful economic actors in the United States benefit from China’s unfair trading system.