MEXICAN AUTO PARTS INDUSTRY STRUGGLING TO COMPETE GLOBALLY

Mexico is learning the same lesson that the United States did decades ago - jobs will shift to the lowest cost country that can produce the product at an acceptable quality. In the case of the United States, some of the early production jobs that left the country went to Mexico where wages were a fraction of those paid in the U.S. Today, those Mexican jobs are leaving for even lower-cost countries like China and Honduras. Mexico can seem attractive to companies with wages of $1.50 per hour, but cannot compete with Honduran wages that are less than $1.00 (74 cents for Alcoa workers in that country).

From The Chicago Tribune:

Not so long ago, Mexico floated along as a low-cost producer to the auto parts world. But now its niche is threatened by global rivals who can trump it with lower salaries or superior quality and productivity. As a result, Mexican auto parts firms keep pressing to trim costs, and Mexican workers find themselves working longer, harder and sometimes for less.

Consider Alcoa Inc.'s move into Honduras. Several years ago the Pittsburgh-based firm opened some auto parts facilities with a base wage of 74 cents an hour in that country, according to the National Labor Committee, a small New York-based group that tracks workers' conditions globally. That compares with Alcoa's auto parts operations in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico, where workers' average weekly salaries and other benefits for a 48-hour week come to $76.22, according to company spokesman Kevin Lowery.

ATTITUDES TOWARD GLOBAL TRADE, FOREIGN COMPANIES, FREE MARKETS, AND MORE

Want to know how people around the world feel about issues such as global trade, free markets, and immigration? Check out the summary of results from the Pew Global Attitudes Project. If you are pressed for time, then just examine the charts and graphs. I think you will find some of the results surprising. The "Wealth and Religiosity" graph was particularly interesting to me and does a good job of illustrating different perspectives globally regarding religion, morality, values, and wealth. For that matter, one does not need to think globally about such issues to find different perspectives, as there is quite a split here in the United States.