Im-Politic: Is the Conventional Wisdom Wrong on Trump and Women Voters, Too?

Tags

2016 election, Chris Cillizza, Donald Trump, Im-Politic, John Kasich, Republicans, Ted Cruz, Walmart, Walmart moms, Washington Post, women

I normally don’t consider WalMart a reliable purveyor or sponsor of polling data, and I normally wouldn’t make a big deal out of a single focus group. But new Walmart-financed findings by Democratic pollster Margie Omero and Republican counterpart Neil Newhouse – and reported in the Washington Post – are so potentially game-changing for this year’s presidential election that they deserve at least some attention.

In short, they indicate that if Donald Trump wins the Republican presidential nomination, he won’t have nearly as much of a problem with female voters as held by the conventional wisdom. And these results seem at least reasonably credible since you wouldn’t think that outspoken trade critic Trump is import-happy WalMart’s favorite politician these days.

The focus group was held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and zeroed in on “WalMart moms” – a demographic “defined as women who have children younger than 18 at home and have gone to the store at least once in the past month.” And participants were split evenly between Trump supporters on the one hand, and backers of the two other remaining active Republican candidates on the other.

According to a summary of these Republican women from Omero and Newhouse, “Characterizing Donald Trump as a type of car or animal resulted in some fascinating descriptions …women depicted him as a Porsche, a Ferrari, a muscle car, a boxer who stands his ground, a bulldog, an Escalade, a lion (fierce and king of the jungle) and as an unpredictable cat. These Moms praised him as someone who speaks his mind, stands his ground, and is refreshingly politically incorrect.”

Newhouse added in an interview with Post reporter Chris Cillizza, “These GOP Walmart moms seem to want no part of the #NeverTrump movement. In fact, they respect his strength and his straight talk and believe he is the party’s best shot to beat Hillary.”

And what about the numerous degrading comments the Republican front-runner has made throughout his career about women? “When these GOP Moms were pushed about Trump’s gender issues,” the two pollsters wrote, “there was some acknowledgment that he may be a ‘sexist,’ but general agreement among these women was that ‘I don’t really care, I’ve seen worse.’”

Given these attitudes, it’s not surprising that this focus group seemed unenthusiastic – at best – about Trump’s Republican rivals Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich. But the terms used to describe them are worth quoting:

“Voters were generally unable to tell us much about either Cruz or Kasich, [The Walmart moms] seemed to dislike Cruz perhaps more than the swing Moms [from suburban Philadelphia and questioned in a separate focus group]; he was generally described in both groups as ‘religious,’ ‘gorilla — almost human,’ or ‘like a neighbor’s dog — you don’t know if they’re going to bite.’  Kasich’s image was even thinner, ‘I think they like him in Ohio,’ said one, ‘too sane,’ or ‘Mild, like a kitten,’ said others.”

And how would the Walmart moms react if Trump was denied the GOP crown? “Terribly misled” and “cheated” were representative reactions.

National polls still show Trump with high negatives with American women overall (70 percent, according to a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal survey), and even with Republican women (50 percent.) But pollsters and the rest of the U.S. political establishment never saw the Trump challenge coming and have underestimated him from the get-go. (Ditto for analyses of Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders.) Who’s to say that the supposed experts won’t be just as wrong in doubting that his relationship with women is just as “amazing” as he’s claimed it is with other key voting blocs?

Those Stubborn Facts: Walmart’s Fake Buy-AmericanCampaign

Tags

Buy American, domestic manufacturing, imports, Made in the USA, manufacturing, Stubborn Facts, Walmart

“Building on the success of last year’s ‘Made in the USA’ Open Call, Walmart is again reaching out to suppliers asking them to pitch products manufactured in the U.S.”

–IndustryWeek, May 27, 2015

Walmart’s Rank Among U.S. Importers, 2014: #1

Difference Between Walmart’s Imports & No. 2 (Target), 2014: Nearly 50%

Increase in Walmart Imports, 2013-14: 6%

Last Year Walmart Imports Rose This Much: 2005

(Sources: “Made in the USA Products on Walmart’s Wish List,” by Adrienne Selko, IndustryWeek, May 27, 2015, http://www.industryweek.com/supply-chain/made-usa-products-walmarts-wish-list and “This Just In: Walmart is #1 Importer, AGAIN. Where are those American Manufacturing Jobs?,” The WalMart 1%, June 8, 2015, http://walmart1percent.org/author/krudiger/)

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Low-Wage America’s Surprising New Face

Tags

Employment, fast food workers, hotels, Jobs, minimum wage, recovery, restaurants, retail, wages, Walmart, {What's Left of) Our Economy

One of the biggest lessons taught by yesterday’s September U.S. employment report is that if you want evidence that the current jobs rebound contains too many lousy jobs, don’t look mainly at the numbers in retail, or leisure and hospitality.

Both of those sectors still pay poorly, and are full of positions with few or no benefits – when the jobs are even full-time or permanent in the first place. And of course retail and leisure/hospitality are highly visible to all of us – or at least all of us who shop, go to restaurants, or stay at hotels.

But as the September jobs figures revealed yet again, their prominence in the recovery has been dwarfed by the abstract-sounding administrative and support services sector.

Part of the reason for this category’s neglect is the tendency of its jobs to stay in the background. They’re non-management positions in offices, like secretaries and personal assistants and receptionists and mail clerks, and especially in job placement and temporary help companies. Another part of the reason is that these jobs are lumped into a super-category called “professional and business services” that also includes lawyers and management consultants and architects and computer systems designers and info-tech consultants and other unquestionably good jobs.

So when most analysts looked at the September jobs figures, they saw that the professional and business services category created 81,000 of the 248,000 net new positions generated by the economy, and no doubt felt pretty encouraged. The problem is that 58,900 of these new professional and business service jobs were administrative and support jobs, and their outsized growth has been a major feature of the employment scene since its recession bottom in February, 2010.

That dreary month, administrative and support services jobs represented 12.77 percent of all U.S. non-farm jobs (the U.S. employment universe according to the U.S. Labor Department, which compiles and published the jobs data). As of last month, this share had risen to 13.92 percent. In other words, the administrative and support services sector generated fully 29.26 percent of the total jobs created in America since the jobs low point.

Unfortunately, though, whereas the typical private sector U.S. wage last month was $10.22 per hour adjusted for inflation, the typical real wage in administrative and support services was only $7.69.

That’s just slightly higher than inflation-adjusted pay in retail and in leisure and hospitality jobs — $7.13 and $5.79 per hour, respectively. And as shares of total employment, changes in these categories have been smaller, at best, than that of administrative and support services. Since February 2010, the retail share has actually dipped by .05 percentage points, from 11.10 percent to 11.05 percent, and the leisure and hospitality share has increased from 9.97 percent to 10.53 percent.

As a result, retail and leisure have accounted for only 10.39 percent and 17.93 percent of American jobs created since the bottom – considerably lower than the nearly 30 percent administrative and support share.

So if you want to understand fully the realities of low-wage America, think less of WalMart greeters or even the fast-food workers and hotel employees whose minimum wage campaigns have made so much news recently. Think more about the typical office worker – especially in employment firms focused on finding other low-quality jobs for their countrymen and women.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Is Walmart Really Changing its Offshoring Spots?

Tags

assembly, competitiveness, Made in America, manufacturing, manufacturing renaissance, offshoring, procurement, productivity, sourcing, trade policy, wages, Walmart, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Walmart is such a huge player in the U.S. economy that any evidence of the retail giant markedly shifting its sourcing strategy toward buying American-made goods could be significant positive for domestic manufacturing. And an article in the excellent publication Manufacturing & Technology News reports signs that such a shift is in the making.

At the same time, there’s a big cautionary note included in the piece indicating that whatever manufacturing gains result from more Walmart domestic sourcing would represent a decidedly pyrrhic victory.

Among the encouraging facts presented in the August 31 article: According to the company’s website, its Made in the USA manufactured offerings have increased from 500 to 15,000, and the number of domestic manufacturers selling it goods has quadrupled. Moreover, in the 18 months since Walmart announced its intention to purchase $250 billion in additional American-made goods by 2023, the company says that suppliers have begun moving production back state-side.

Some caveats must be kept in mind here. For example, by “goods,” Walmart could also mean not only manufactures, but farm products sold by its grocery operations. Also, Walmart’s claim that it’s now selling American-made television sets shows that its definition of Made in the USA also includes “assembled in the USA” – which adds much less value to the U.S. economy.

But there’s a much bigger problem. Walmart execs keep telegraphing to reporters that they now understand the importance of U.S. job creation – especially for working class Americans – because without adequate incomes, these folks increasingly can’t afford to shop robustly even at low-price stores like Walmart. That dawning realization is of course not only encouraging, but also hugely ironic, since Walmart’s massive overseas sourcing over the years has pushed so much manufacturing output and so many industrial jobs abroad to begin with.

At the same time, Walmart CEO insists that the company “will not change its strategy of generating low margins on high volume,” and the article made clear that “the China price” (and other third world prices) will remain the standard governing Walmart procurement policy.

That would be fine if U.S.-based manufacturers could meet this challenge overwhelmingly by improving their productivity. Trouble is, although manufacturing still leads the American economy in productivity by a wide margin, there’s no evidence showing any acceleration recently in the sector’s efficiency gains when measured by the broadest productivity indicator – multifactor productivity. In fact, according to the latest available Labor Department data, multifactor productivity in manufacturing has been improving at a slower rate since the Great Recession began (0.4 percent compounded annually through 2012) than before the downturn 1.9 percent from 2000 to 2007).

Moreover, other Labor Department figures make a strong case that, rather than taking that productivity-enhancing “high road” to maintaining and improving efficiency and therefore competitiveness, U.S.-based manufacturers are taking the “low road” of cutting wages. These data show that inflation-adjusted wages in American manufacturing have fallen nearly 13 times faster than wages for the entire American private sector during the dreary recovery that ostensibly began in mid-2009.

Worse, as long as Walmart and the rest of American business retain the option of overseas sourcing, they’ll have strong incentives to stay on the low road even if they use more domestic suppliers – by holding a totally credible offshoring threat over their heads. As a result, even if firms such as Walmart deserve considerable credit for good intentions, there’s still no reasonable denying that a genuine U.S. manufacturing renaissance will remain impossible until the offshoring option is eliminated – which will require a top-to-bottom transformation of U.S. trade policy.