There is nothing more American than Walmart and nothing more American than outsourcing jobs to other countries. Walmart made a big fuss about its “Made in the USA” initiative, a project in which it promised to invest $250 billion over 10 years to support American-made products. But it seems that Walmart isn’t being completely honest about where its USA-crafted wares are coming from.
Truth in Advertising found over 100 items on the Walmart website labeled as “Made in the USA” were made overseas — and it wasn’t too difficult to unearth Walmart’s missteps. The organization said that many of these American-made pieces were made in China – and the proof was all right there on the packaging.
Walmart claims that the mislabeling is just a simple coding mistake and is trying to downplay the gravity of the situation: “Based on our initial internal review, we believe these errors are limited to a small percentage of items and we are confident in the overall integrity of the information on our Web site,” they said. Walmart intends to correct these mistakes by July 9 – and Truth in Advertising will be checking the site to make sure everything is accurate.
Walmart is apparently making a lot of money off “Made in the USA” pieces, according to Bonnie Patten, Truth in Advertising’s executive director. “Studies show Americans want to buy Made in the U.S. products and are willing to pay more for them. When Wal-Mart slaps that label on a product, it boosts the sales. It’s disingenuous for them to say this is all coding errors.”
[via WWD]
