Walmart is importing more goods into the U.S. from India as the country looks to reduce its dependence on China in an attempt to cut costs and diversify its supply chain.
According to figures from the data firm ImportYeti that were shared with Reuters, Walmart shipped 25% of its U.S. imports from India between January 2023 and August 2023, up from 2% in 2018. During the same period, 60% of the company’s shipments came from China, a 20% decrease compared to 2018.
“We want the best prices,” said Andrea Albright, Walmart’s executive vice president of sourcing, in an interview. “That means I need resiliency in our supply chains. I can’t be reliant on any one supplier or geography for my product because we’re constantly managing things, from hurricanes and earthquakes, to shortages in raw materials.”
Albright added that India has emerged as a key part of Walmart’s effort to build out its manufacturing capacity.
Walmart has been expanding its presence in India since 2018 when the company bought a 77% stake in the e-commerce firm Flipkart. In 2020, Walmart announced a commitment to import $10 billion of goods from India annually by 2027, a target the company is still on track to hit, Albright said. Currently, Walmart imports roughly $3 billion of goods from India each year.
Supply chain experts said that the increased cost of shipping goods from China has contributed to the shift to India. But an upward shift in wages is also a factor.
“Sourcing from mainland China has become less competitive because of rising labor costs versus other manufacturing centers,” said Chris Rogers, a research analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence’s supply chain analysis group Panjiva.
