Hey Michelle and Barack: Walmart and Amazon Are the Problem, Not the Solution

The couple's choice of corporate partners to promote their agendas is highly questionable.

The Obamas are proving singularly inept at choosing appropriate venues to highlight their initiatives. In June 2011 Michelle invited giant retailers, including Walmart, to the White House to launch her effort to persuade the country’s largest retailers to move into inner city “food deserts.” She later visited a Walmart in Springfield, Missouri to applaud its corporate expansion into urban areas.

My colleague at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Stacy Mitchell, chided Ms. Obama, “If you were to rank the factors that have contributed to the disappearance of neighborhood grocery stores over the last two decades, Walmart would be a pretty formidable contender for the top spot.”

Walmart has captured 25 percent of the nation’s grocery market and in 29 metropolitan areas commands a 50 percent share. It has almost saturated rural and suburban America and now wants to massively move into urban areas. That is not sitting well with many of its targeted neighborhoods. Ms. Obama’s advance team should have been aware that a vigorous, sustained protest against Walmart moving into a historic downtown neighborhood was ongoing in Springfield. Only a few days before Ms. Obama’s visit the City Council ultimately approved the Walmart by a vote of 5-4. The outcome may have been less an endorsement of Walmart than an effort to avoid embarrassing Michelle.

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