In Trump’s America, Walmart Pays Their Workers a Decent Rate

Day by day, the evidence that President Donald Trump is living up to his prediction that he would be the “greatest jobs president” in history is growing stronger and stronger. Since the first day of his administration, he has put lie to the idea that it would be a mistake to put a successful businessman in the White House, just as we knew he would. Unemployment rates are the lowest they’ve been in years, companies are slowly but surely moving their operations back to the United States, and the recently-passed tax reform bill is already having an enormous impact on the economy. Oh, and did we forget to mention it: Wall Street is seeing some of the biggest numbers its ever seen.

Things are looking bright, and they’re about to get a whole lot brighter for employees of the nation’s largest retailer.

Walmart announced this week that they would be increasing the starting wage rate for all new associates to $11 an hour. Additionally, the company said they would be expanding maternity leave benefits and handing out a cash bonus of up to $1,000 to many of their hourly associates. “The company is also creating a new benefit to assist associates with adoption expenses,” Walmart said in a press release. “The combined wage and benefit changes with benefit the company’s more than one million U.S. hourly associates.”

In a statement conveying the new initiatives, Walmart president and CEO Doug McMillon left no question as to why his company was making these moves.

“We are early in the stages of assessing the opportunities tax reform creates for us to invest in our customers and associates and to further strengthen our business, all of which should benefit our shareholders,” McMillon said. “However, some guiding themes are clear and consistent with how we’ve been investing — lower prices for customers, better wages and training for associates and investments in the future of our company, including in technology. Tax reform gives us the opportunity to be more competitive globally and to accelerate plans for the U.S.”

We don’t care if Robert Mueller proves that Trump and Putin took a 7-day Caribbean cruise together in the middle of the 2016 campaign; if Republicans can run on a winning economy that voters can feel in their household budgets…there’s no stopping the Trump Train. As James Carville said so long ago, it’s the economy, stupid. So far, every indication has it that Trump is going to do what Obama couldn’t – bring us all the way back from the recession…and maybe well beyond.