Forbes report states that Walmart has been encouraging US manufacturers to produce more products for the big market chain in the United States. Manufacturers did what was heeded of them however, they did so in a different manner.
The reasons why Walmart encourages these manufacturing companies could be of political in nature, or could be due to trade tariffs from importing from China, or could also so that lead times will be lessen as it will be within the country.
Nevertheless, it is feared that no matter how Walmart asks for the local producers to provide them their local manufactured products, the jobs will unlikely be back. As how Steve Jobs uttered to President Obama before, those jobs are never coming back.
Very few manual labor jobs are to come back, too few to fill the needs of unemployed. Machines have mostly taken over the production line. Manufacturers have made use of the advanced technology of manufacturing the products. Even the most intensive tasks can already be handled by machines instead of people whom the employers need to pay by the hour.
With this scenario, the US economy does not possibly see the manufacturing industry as part of the mass employment factor in the near future.
Walmart is very much interested in selling US made products. They encourage US manufacturers to produce them the goods locally, and if so, they will get more shelf space at Wal-Mart .
However, most of the jobs that pay better have been replaced by these machines which cut the workforce in half. Most of the positions that a person can do pays much lower than the actual minimum wage of $15 per hour.