BREAKING: Wal-Mart Uses Its Might to Block Port Security

by Donna Jablonski, Apr 5, 2006

Wal-Mart and its Washington, D.C., lobbyist, the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), have systematically undermined America’s security by working to defeat or weaken rules to make America’s seaports and supply chains safe from terrorist attacks. A new report by the AFL-CIO’s Jason Judd, Unchecked: How Wal-Mart Uses Its Might to Block Port Security, documents their efforts since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to ensure that “security requirements should not become a barrier to trade.”

With $11.2 billion in profits last year, Wal-Mart is RILA’s biggest and most influential member by far. Wal-Mart counts on the trade group’s representation in matters ranging from Maryland’s state law requiring large employers to pay minimal amounts for workers’ health care to challenges of other countries’ zoning and investment laws before the World Trade Organization.

On port security, that representation has included pressuring Congress to reject requirements for “smart containers” and electronic seals on cargo coming into the United States, independent and regular inspections of supply chain security practices, container-handling fees to help finance port security measures and requirements to let U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) know what is being shipped in and from where it is coming.

One of America’s top port security experts, retired U.S. Coast Guard Commander Stephen Flynn, puts the cost of helping protect our ports at 0.2 percent of the value of cargo in the containers—for Wal-Mart, about $36 million a year. That’s less than one-third of 1 percent of the profits Wal-Mart raked in last year—and several million dollars less than Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott’s total compensation over the past two years. But for Wal-Mart and RILA, that’s money worth fighting for.

Wal-Mart’s lobbyist group helped engineer a voluntary container and supply-chain “security” program with standards so minimal Flynn likens it to an “honor system.” Think about that—Wal-Mart can’t even credibly enforce its own code of conduct to protect foreign workers from sweatshop conditions and we’re expected to trust it with a voluntary port security program. What’s more, CBP promises participating shippers no surprise inspections of supply chain security—much like the U.S. Department of Labor’s 2005 pledge to give Wal-Mart 15 days’ notice before government inspectors come looking for wage and hour or child labor violations—after Wal-Mart was cited for child labor violations.

Moves to put teeth into or require dollars behind port security have been stomped out by RILA with Capitol Hill lobbying blitzes—and Wal-Mart and RILA spend mightily on members of Congress with the most sway over port security issues. Based on Federal Election Commission data, the report says:

Wal-Mart has given $191,500 to current House Homeland Security Committee members since 2000—all but $9,500 of that since the September 2001 attacks. Eighteen of the committee’s 19 Republican members took in $173,000—90 percent of the total—and four of the committee’s 14 Democrats collected $18,500.

In the past eight years, Wal-Mart’s Washington Political Action Committee put more than $360,000 into current members of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. Twenty-three of the committee’s 24 Republicans took Wal-Mart’s money—82 percent of the total—as did eight of the committee’s 17 Democrats.

Wal-Mart also has spent $63,000 on current members of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs in the past eight years—more than two-thirds of that since September 2001. Ninety-six percent of Wal-Mart’s spending went to the committee’s Republican members.

Compare Wal-Mart’s 2003-2004 Washington campaign contributions with those of Target, its chief rival: Wal-Mart spent $2.7 million, putting it third on the list of top corporate contributors. Target spent $295,000, good for 192nd place.

Some 11 million cargo containers will pass through U.S. ports this year. Two-thirds of Wal-Mart’s portion of that total will come from China, with the remainder coming from 70 other countries “where we find a dangerous cocktail of workers’ rights abuses and lax enforcement, official corruption and active terrorist organizations.” A single shipping container can be what one expert calls a “poor-man’s missile,” killing thousands of Americans and cutting the blood flow to the economy. The AFL-CIO represents millions of workers on the frontlines of port security—port, transportation and emergency workers, including first responders, as well as working families in communities nearby.

Although we’ve been fortunate never to have suffered a catastrophic attack on an American seaport, we know for a fact—Wal-Mart and RILA and our national leaders know darn well—that it can happen. ABC News smuggled into this country 15-pound canisters of depleted uranium in 2002 and again in 2003.  A March 2006 Government Accountability Office investigation smuggled enough radioactive material across our borders with Mexico and Canada to make two dirty bombs.

But Wal-Mart’s massive profits and retail dominance are built on the speed and efficiency of the movement of products through its supply chain. Wal-Mart and RILA fight like hell to keep anything—like reasonable inspections—from slowing that chain down or diverting any portion of the lucre into security measures. And that’s rich, considering Wal-Mart wrings more than $4.3 billion each year from federal, state and local governments to provide income and health care subsidies to its low-wage workers and has sucked up more than $1 billion in the past 20 years from state and local governments for the construction of its stores and distribution centers.

Port security got some much-needed attention when the controversy exploded over the Bush administration’s move to hand U.S. ports to Dubai Ports World. But the administration and its allies in Congress need to get serious enough about keeping America safe to take on the world’s largest retailer and its pals, much less the terrorists.

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