TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — After visiting the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso, President Biden moved on to Mexico City for a summit with the Mexican President and the Canadian Prime Minister. Part of their discussions will be about how to bring more industry back to North America from places like Asia.
Problems like shipping stack-ups and supply chain snags have more companies looking for ways to build their products closer to home.
“What we're seeing now is more of a diversification saying, I'm going to not have a 2000-person operation in Asia anymore. I'm going to maybe reduce that to 500 or a thousand. And I'm going to move operations in different parts. I'm going to move some back to North America. I might go back to the United States, I'm for sure going to go into Mexico. And I'm also going to maybe look at Europe or South America.”
Josh Rubin runs Javid LLC. He says 35 corporations have hired his company to manage maquilas—factories in Mexico building for non-Mexican companies.
He says making products in Mexico, creates jobs in the U.S. too because parts and expertise go back and forth across the border to create finished products.
He says with maquilas about 40 percent of a product’s value comes from the U.S. but with Chinese products, it’s four percent.
“Meaning that manufacturing is coming back to North America or to Mexico means that the jobs that were lost when people sent it to China should start recreating because there's a lot of raw material, a lot of things that we buy from the US that as more companies move to Mexico, they're gonna need more of those resources. And we're gonna find more people getting jobs in the US from that.”
Rubin says he hopes Biden’s meeting with the leaders of Mexico and Canada will lead to easier investments in Mexico and more incentives for companies to set up factories there—factories that can help create jobs on both sides of the border.
——-
Craig Smith is a reporter for KGUN 9. With more than 40 years of reporting in cities like Tampa, Houston and Austin, Craig has covered more than 40 Space Shuttle launches and covered historic hurricanes like Katrina, Ivan, Andrew and Hugo. Share your story ideas and important issues with Craig by emailing craig.smith@kgun9.com or by connecting on Facebook and Twitter.
