Al's Emporium: Happy Thanksgrabbing!

   By Al Lewis 

Why stuff a turkey when you can stuff a shopping cart full of cheap, Chinese-made goods?

Several of America's struggling retailers are open on Thanksgiving Day, including Best Buy, Dick's Sporting Goods, J.C. Penney, Kmart, Kohl's, Macy's, Sears, Target, Toys 'R' Us and Wal-Mart.

Many of these retailers have recently reported disappointing financial results. All of them face what retail analysts predict could be the worst holiday shopping season since 2009.

Target Chief Executive Gregg Steinhafel put the challenge succinctly enough on Thursday as he reported a 47% decline in third-quarter earnings: "Consumer spending remains constrained."

Privately held retailers have grown sales at an annual rate of less than 1% so far in 2013, the lowest since 2009, according to market-research firm Sageworks. Smaller mom-and-pop retailers -- the ones the Big Boxes like to crush the most -- have suffered a 2% contraction so far in 2013, Sageworks reports.

The solution for many mass merchants is to take what President Lincoln declared as a national day of giving thanks and turn it into a national day of grabbing foreign-made goods.

In doing so, they continue the cycle that has landed them precisely where they are today. A recent report by the Economic Policy Institute estimates that America's widening trade deficit with China between 2001 and 2011 eliminated a net 2.7 million U.S. jobs. The equation is simple: (more imports) = (fewer jobs) = (fewer shoppers).

But the story is more complicated: "Even if trade were balanced, U.S. workers would still lose, because we export low-wage products to China (such as agricultural products) and import high-wage products (such as computer and electronic products)," the report noted.

Laura Lucas is a former Amazon executive who founded footvote.com, a website that sells "Made in U.S.A." products. She can't believe how people line up for deals on Black Friday/Thursday -- or what I call "Thanksgrabbing."

"It astonishes me . . . how many men and women have sacrificed to secure our freedom -- and then we as a society are not willing to buy American-made products so that they have a strong economy to come home to," she says.

Footvote is well-intended, but too few consumers actually vote with their feet. Stores choosing to stay closed on Thanksgiving -- including Costco, Dillard's, Home Depot, Nordstrom and T.J. Maxx -- will get only fleeting thanks

Wal-Mart will get more business. It is perennially under fire for doing what many other retailers do, only more efficiently. It pays its employees "always low" wages, creating a growing class of working poor. Yet America shops there anyway.

At a recent investors' conference, Wal-Mart U.S. CEO Bill Simon tacitly admitted that as many as 525,000 of his full-time employees earn less than $25,000 a year. You've likely heard the furor over a news story out of Cleveland last week that reported on a Wal-Mart store's canned-food drive "so associates could enjoy Thanksgiving dinner."

Protests are mounting against Wal-Mart. Petitions are flying. News reports are lamenting the thousands of people who must toil on Thanksgiving Day. It's all very loud, but the Christmas music is always louder.

Most shoppers will never stop to ask "What are we doing to the economy?" They are more likely to ask "How 'bout that Funai 32-inch HDTV on sale for $98?"

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Al Lewis is a columnist based in Denver. He blogs at tellittoal.com; his email address is [e-mail]