Wal-Mart to Buy More U.S. Made Goods, Too

In addition to its plans to hire veterans, here's another welcome piece of good news from Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer.

And it relates to sourcing more products from U.S. based suppliers, thus creating more jobs in the process of doing so.

Wal-Mart Makes Pledges on Veterans, Sourcing says this about its plans to buy more U.S. made products:

"Wal-Mart Stores plans to offer jobs to veterans in their first 12 months off active duty and boost domestic sourcing of products by $50 billion over the next 10 years. {See our earlier posting on this today.}. . .

Wal-Mart also said it will take a two-pronged approach to boosting sourcing in the U.S.: increasing what it already buys domestically in categories like sporting goods, apparel basics, storage products, games, and paper products, and helping to bring back to U.S. shores production in areas such as textiles, furniture and higher-end appliances.

"At the heart of our national political conversation today is one issue: creating jobs to grow the economy," Mr. Simon said. "We are meeting with our suppliers on domestic manufacturing and are making a strong commitment to move this forward."

Wal-Mart cited data from its suppliers, showing items that are made, sourced or grown in the U.S. account for about two-thirds of what the company spends to buy products at Wal-Mart U.S. It added that it sees room to do more and has created a senior team within the company to lead the effort and it will sign longer term purchase agreements to give suppliers more certainty."

Summing Up

Good for Wal-Mart.

And good for America and American workers, too.

Thanks. Bob.