These approaches, sometimes termed ''Buy American'' compaigns, fly in the face of conventional economics. They limit competition and usually mean higher prices for consumers. American consumers tend to be price-wary shoppers, and so if imports are cheaper, they go to the stores that sell them. Also, Wal-Mart is swimming against an awesome tide. Although its sales last year, mostly of American-made goods, were $6.4 billion, which put it behind only the K Mart Corporation among discounters, such a figure pales alongside the ever-rising American trade deficits, and Wal-Mart, by itself, is unlikely to make much of a dent. The only beneficiaries of Wal-Mart's policy may thus be its competitors. ''If you can buy domestically, we would much rather do that, but we're looking for the best value for the customer,'' said A. Robert Stevenson, vice president for corporate and public relations at K Mart. ''We're for free trade,'' said Robert Ulrich, president of the third-ranking Target Stores discount chain, a division of Dayton-Hudson. ''We're the customer's representative, and we try to get the best deal for that customer.''

But Wall Street analysts who monitor Wal-Mart are impressed by Mr. Walton's campaign. ''He has a leadership role in American retailing,'' said Walter Loeb, a retail industry analyst at Morgan Stanley & Company. ''He's somebody coming out and saying, 'Hey, we don't have to buy everything from the Far East.' I think this is the beginning of a major drive of American retailers to buy American products.''

Mr. Walton did not say that Wal-Mart would pay more for American products or undermine the company's competitive advantages as a discount store. But Wal-Mart executives say that indeed they will sometimes pay a little more for American goods and then shave the markups they put on their goods.

''But that's not the point,'' said David Glass, presi dent of Wal-Mart. The point, Mr. Glass said, is to look differently at the costs of buying imports and to modify the company's ways of doing business with domestic suppliers to help them keep their costs down.

On April 2, Wal-Mart signed its biggest order yet under its ''Buy American'' program. It ordered 400,000 portable electric fans from Lasko Metal Products of West Chester, Pa., a deal worth more than $3 million. Lasko will produce most of Wal- Mart's fans in Franklin, Tenn., and Fort Worth, which are in the heart of Wal-Mart's territory.