If it’s truly impossible to know the failure rate of Walmart tires vs the failure rate of tires sold by other companies (and absent any cites to the contrary, I agree that it is), then saying “they’re cheaper, so they’re obviously less-safe,” is not only fallacious, it’s screamingly ignorant. In fact, I’m pretty sure it qualifies as libel.
I’m mostly confused about your association between low cost and lax material/safety regulations. Walmart accomplishes lower pricing by taking advantage of “economy of scale.” It’s an economic term meaning they can undercut everyone else and make a razor-thin margin on any product, but still come out ahead because they will sell 10,000 times more than any local company could ever hope to.
You have an anti-Walmart agenda, and I’m onto it. There are plenty of REAL reasons to dislike Walmart–their crappy wages, scheduling employees for 35-39 hours a week to avoid giving them full-time benefits, the way they crowd out mom-and-pop stores. Why not pick on Walmart’s *real *problems, instead? By inventing fake ones, you come off as hysterical and eminently ignorable.
When we last bought new tires, we got Michelins - I got the impression that those were the only American-made ones available. Even Firestone / Goodyear etc. were made in China. In other words, the only American-made tires were the ones from the French-owned company.
As I recall, the locally-owned shops were significantly more expensive than the chain stores, so we went with NTB for our tires. Didn’t even consider Wal-Mart (and I’d have avoided it anyway for similar reasons to yours).