Excerpts from an article in the Business section of the BBC:
The reclining armchairs and plush leather sofas coming off the production line at Man Wah Furniture's factory in Monterrey are 100% "Made in Mexico".They're destined for large retailers in the US, like Costco and Walmart. But the company is from China, its Mexican manufacturing plant built with Chinese capital. The triangular relationship between the US, China and Mexico is behind the buzzword in Mexican business: nearshoring.Man Wah is one of scores of Chinese companies to relocate to industrial parks in northern Mexico in recent years, to bring production closer to the US market. As well as saving on shipping, their final product is considered completely Mexican - meaning Chinese firms can avoid the US tariffs and sanctions imposed on Chinese goods amid the continuing trade war between the two countries..."While the Chinese origin of the capital coming into Mexico may be uncomfortable for the policies of some countries," he says, "according to international trade legislation, those products are, to all intents and purposes, Mexican".That has given Mexico an obvious strategic foothold between the two superpowers: Mexico recently replaced China as the US's main trading partner, a significant and symbolic change...When an American family buys it at a Walmart store near them, they may have little idea of the complex geopolitics underpinning its production.
This is no secret in the business world (although the term is new to me). What galls me is that American politicians can pompously orate about being tough on China "to protect American workers" and then wink-wink get the same products by another route.
I have family members living/working in Africa and South America and they are aware of the extent to which Chinese corporations and government policies are targeting local people for employment and infrastructure, building relationships with eyes decades to the future.
To your last paragraph, I read the science fiction anthology "Iraq + 100" a few years ago, and it struck my American self how many of the stories pointed to Chinese influence over American influence as a big source of anxiety
ReplyDeleteNot in our library, but I found this: Iraq + 100 poses a question to contemporary Iraqi writers: what might your home city look like in the year 2103 – exactly 100 years after the disastrous American and British-led invasion of Iraq? How might that war reach across a century of repair and rebirth, and affect the state of the country – its politics, its religion, its language, its culture – and how might Iraq have finally escaped its chaos, and found its own peace, a hundred years down the line? As well as being an exercise in escaping the politics of the present, this anthology is also an opportunity for a hotbed of contemporary Arabic writers to offer its own spin on science fiction and fantasy.
DeleteThe China-Mexico link as a business strategy goes beyond products available in Walmart. It is being leveraged in electric cars. One recent report --
ReplyDeletehttps://www.autoweek.com/news/a60164799/chinese-evs-from-byd-in-mexico/
The Chinese are ingratiating themselves to cities and countries all around the world so when the poop hits the fan they can tell the locals, hey we’re your friends, look what we’ve done for you.
ReplyDeleteMan Wah may be making 100% Mexican goods but many of these “nearshore” factories are just assembling pieces shipped in.
China didn’t invent this, look at industry/mining/forestry/business in foreign countries and how many are financed/owned/operated by Americans?
xoxoxoBruce