boris johnson
November 10, 2023 17:03, updated November 10, 2023 18:23
Well, hello everyone. I am submitting this dispatch from Bentonville, Arkansas. Bentonville is a fun place that boasts exhilarating mountain biking trails that lead into the nearby Ozarks.
The air is like champagne, the sky is deep blue, and the leaves turn red and gold in a uniquely American way. And I am witnessing an economic miracle. And it’s a lesson in how free and open markets are essential to world peace.
I don’t think I’ve ever consciously gone to Arkansas in my life. The only political fact I remember about this state of about 3 million people is that Bill Clinton was once its governor. And when he began his campaign to become president in 1992, he did something extraordinary and reprehensible.
He returned to the capital, Little Rock, with the sole purpose of signing a governor’s order to proceed with the execution of an African American named Ricky Ray Rector. He killed two people and then shot him in the head with a kind of car. -Lobotomy surgery. Many lawyers believed the death sentence was cruel and wrong because the pastor was clearly not of sound mind.
As a result of his injuries, he was said to have been howling like a wolf, and when given his last meal before being taken away to receive a lethal injection, he was given pudding by a guard, a slice of pecan pie. asked to save it for “later.”
Well, the protests of liberal lawyers were in vain. Mr. Clinton was under pressure to prove his law-and-order tough-guy credentials, and Ricky Ray was up for it.
But you’ll be glad to know that the prison guards respected his wishes. They kept his pecan pie.
I expect it to be a pretty good pie and would have kept for a while before chucking. And that’s because it’s statistically far more likely that the prison’s pecan pie came from the number one grocery store in Arkansas, and indeed in the world. .
It is said that 95% of Americans between the ages of 19 and 34 buy food here.
Therefore, I would bet a dime or a dollar that the pecan pie is a Walmart pie. In 1950 here in Bentonville, Arkansas, former Boy Scout champion and U.S. Army Captain Sam Walton founded his first store, Walton’s, which later became Wal-Mart. And although he died in 1992 at the age of 74, his already vast empire was expanded by his descendants into a leviathan of barely believable proportions.
Walmart is not only the world’s largest private sector employer, bigger than Amazon and bigger than McDonald’s, but also the largest employer of any kind. The Chinese military, with its 2.3 million “collaborators,” has a higher salary than the Chinese military, which has 1.9 million. It’s bigger than the NHS, with 1.7 million people.
And now, although it has sold Asda in the UK, Walmart is constantly growing in Asia, Africa and India (where it has entered the online market).
As well as being the world’s biggest employer, the company has the highest revenue of any company in the world, with around $611 billion (£500 billion) and 400 million different products on its shelves around the world. There are different lines.
Yes, that’s right. We carry 400 million products, from shoes to smartphones, chocolates to toys. You may ask yourself, what is the secret to this continued commercial success?
I’ll tell you in one word. It’s China.
When Sam Walton started back in the 1950s, he tried all kinds of things to get an edge over his competitors – Walmart’s “Group Cheer,” a motivational chant to boost the morale of his co-workers. , a factory he discovered after visiting South Korea’s tennis ball factory.
But there was one thing that ultimately made a big difference. No one was better at buying low and rising higher than Sam Walton.
He and his brother flew all over the United States and then around the world looking for bargains. As China opened up, Walmart took advantage of the country’s extraordinary ability to produce goods at knockdown prices.
The company has hundreds of stores in China, and sales in China exceed $10 billion. But that doesn’t do justice to the scale of the relationship. Currently, about 80 percent of Walmart’s manufactured goods (as opposed to groceries) are sourced, at least in part, from China.
Take your Walmart vacuum cleaner with you. 92% of the parts are made in China. Walmart is trying to source as much as possible from the U.S., and if they got serious they could cut that by as much as 80%, but that work would probably go to other Chinese-owned companies in Vietnam or the Philippines. The same goes for laptops and bicycles.
In other words, Walmart’s business is integrated with China. At a time when people in both the US and UK are talking about the Chinese threat and the need for “decoupling”, we need to think seriously about the implications. .
The simple reality is that the U.S. and Chinese economies are physically linked like Siamese twins.
What if we really tried to kick China out of our supply chains, not only in the US but also in the UK? There would be massive value destruction and huge inflationary pressures. That would be a disaster.
The world is facing an extremely difficult situation. We are facing a terrible crisis in Israel. We are facing the worst war in Europe in 80 years. What we need most is a confrontation with China over Taiwan. That is why it is necessary to ensure that President Xi Jinping does not make any miscalculations.
This is one of the reasons why we are so anxious to win against the Ukrainians and oust Putin. If Ukraine collapses, the world’s authoritarian states will be further emboldened, and if Xi Jinping decides to invade Taiwan, as many fear, it will be a tragedy: for China, for Taiwan. , and also for Western countries. This is because the pressure for sanctions and economic disengagement on both sides will be enormous.
What is holding him back? There is a risk of military failure, a fear that the invasion may fail because it has failed catastrophically for Putin. The US and UK are increasing that risk by supporting Ukraine, and we must continue to do so.
But then there are further considerations. It’s not just U.S. consumers and Walmart shareholders who benefit from trade with China. Of course, it’s the Chinese themselves. Think of how many jobs these exports have created in China and how many Chinese people’s lives have been improved.
Yes, of course we have to be wary of China. And allowing China to enter other important areas such as nuclear power and 5G communications during the “Golden Age” was an overreach. But it is clear that now is not the time to end China’s economic interdependence with the West.
It is autarchy* that leads to aggression, and free trade that leads to peace and prosperity. And what’s good for Walmart is probably good for America and the world. Remember the 1930s?
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