Giant retailer an ally of Obama
As a freshman senator with his eye on the presidency, Barack Obama said he’d never shop at a WalMart and held the company up as an emblem of corporate greed.
Today, Wal-Mart Stores is one of Obama’s most reliable corporate allies, a go-to partner that’s backed the White House on more than a dozen business initiatives, particularly the Affordable Care Act and climate change.
The pairing benefits both. Obama can point to Wal-Mart’s support to beat back Republican charges that he’s hostile to business. Wal-Mart can point to the president’s embrace to lure squeamish shoppers who, like Obama of old, have stayed away out of a belief the company hurts workers and undercuts competition. This is a key part of the company’s effort to spur continued growth.
‘Seen the light’
“It only makes sense for the president to be willing to strike a partnership with the nation’s largest retailer,” said Dwight Hill, a Plano-based partner with retail consultancy McMillan Doolittle. “And Wal-Mart has made more strides of late to try to be more transparent about worker pay and benefits. They have certainly seen the light.”
The president completed the turn from Wal-Mart antagonist to fan when he visited one of the retailer’s stores in Mountain View, Calif., in 2014 to praise its use of renewable energy. The partnership between the president and the retailer is especially strong in two areas: health care and climate change.
Obama’s view of WalMart shifted early in his presidency when he realized he needed business support to advance his health-care overhaul, which Republicans claimed would kill jobs and drive companies out of business. Wal-Mart was one of the first major employers to sign on to the plan. In June 2009, as debate raged in Congress, Wal-Mart publicly released a letter to Obama saying it supported requiring employers to offer health insurance to their workers, a keystone of the law.
For Wal-Mart, the Affordable Care Act — also known as Obamacare — resolved a major gripe about the company: that it provided weak health benefits for its more than 1 million workers in the U.S.
Climate agenda
Wal-Mart and the White House have cooperated on Obama’s climate agenda, which current and former company executives described as a natural gelling of interests rather than a political calculation. WalMart began pushing to cut its carbon footprint in 2005 as a way to not only help the environment, but also improve its public image, and is now the largest corporate user of solar energy.
Robert Reich, labor secretary under President Bill Clinton, said he was upset that Obama had visited the “viciously anti-union” retailer’s Mountain View store. But he said he understood the rationale for working with the company.
“It is the largest employer in America and I think it’s understandable that a president would want to work with them and coax them along,” said Reich.