"Clinton official troubled by attacks on Wal-Mart"

From a press release by Americans for Wal-Mart last Wednesday:

In a new interview released today by americansforwalmart.org, author and former Clinton Administration Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce for Economics and Statistics Paul A. London said Wal-Mart’s opponents are threatening America’s economic future by trying to limit retail competition.

“I’m very concerned about the attacks on Wal-Mart because I believe they are based on the idea that there is some good alternative to fierce competition. But there isn’t,” London said. “In politics and economics, competition is the American idea that changed the undemocratic world, where elites always prevent new people from competing. When people start to think that competition is too intense or that America can’t compete, a lot of what America is about goes away.”

In his book The Competition Solution: The Bipartisan Secret behind American Prosperity (The AEI Press), London explains that bipartisan political decisions in the 1970s to break up monopolies and near monopolies in numerous sectors of the U.S. economy made possible the growth and prosperity of the 1990s. He credits Wal-Mart with leading a “revolution in retailing” which complemented similar changes in other sectors and richly benefited the American people.

Speaking to americansforwalmart.org, London said, “Wal-Mart has been very good for America. It’s a very American phenomenon, a new guy coming along and shaking up 20 percent of the economy. It’s a model of competition that the world envies and is trying to copy. I hope there are always Americans who come along the way Sam Walton did, and the way other people did in other industries, to shake up established companies and make them serve consumers better.”

For the full press release and complete interview, please visit us at americansforwalmart.org.

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