[20after4]

Google (and Walmart) established their dominant position through clever marketing based on lies. We bought it and only now are starting to realize what we fell for.

Google's big lie was "don't be evil." They provided overwhelmingly valuable services for free. They did everything with minimal advertising and generally fantastic performance. Then they merged with an advertising company and pretty soon "don't be evil" was abandoned, along with almost every other principle that they had used to earn their dominant position in search and email.

Walmart in the 1980s and 1990s was all about "Made in the USA.¹" They sold themselves as a small-town company that cared about American jobs and American values. They did this while simultaneously dealing with American manufacturers using ruthless tactics. Walmart had a direct and significant (I would say critical) role in the widespread decline of manufacturing in the US.

1. This is not so prominent anymore but it was a lie from the start. Walmart has a long history with claiming to support American manufacturing while aggressively doing the opposite. https://www.thestand.org/2014/11/how-walmart-destroyed-u-s-m...

[bbor]

This a great, well researched response, and I don’t disagree with the sentiment, but I think we should be careful not go give these companies too much credit. America has, understandably, been investing less in manufacturing over time at a roughly steady rate of decline: https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2017/april/us-manu...

  manufacturing's share of nominal gross domestic product (GDP) has dropped from 28.1 percent in 1953 to just 12 percent in 2015

So I don’t think it started in the 90s with walmart. Although the Fed makes an interesting argument in that article: we don’t manufacture less, we manufacture the same but it’s just worth way less as inflation ticks along. They describe American manufacturing as “fairly constant”, which I think would be considered a very hot take by most Americans

[20after4]

Walmart utilize some pretty underhanded tactics against their suppliers. At least they did back in the 90s and I have reason to believe they still do.

One example: Place a massive order beyond the capability of the supplier to meet the demand but at a premium price to incentivize them to try anyway. Then cancel at the last minute when production is almost finished but doesn't quite meet the original quantity ordered. Finally come back a few weeks / months later and offer to buy the resulting overstock at a deeply discounted price.

Obviously the blame doesn't all belong to Walmart but when a company is struggling and desperate it only takes a couple of deals like that to put them on a fast track to liquidation of their assets until all that remains is a company dedicated to marketing imported products under a previously prestigious brand.

The company I have specific knowledge about, Rawlings Sporting Goods, shut down most of their US manufacturing at the end of the 1990s and moved everything to China. Walmart had a big hand in driving the nails in the coffin of that ~80 year old company.