At 12:01 AM on July 6th, 2018, this short
line was added to Chapter 99 of the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States. With that, new pneumatic tires, of rubber,
of a kind used on aircraft; parts of stock pumps imported for use with machines for making
cellulosic pulp, paper or cardboard; machines for mixing mineral substances with bitumen;
spherical roller bearings; lithium primary cells and primary batteries; fuses, for a
voltage not exceeding 1000 volts; and some 278 other products wo
uld now be subject to
a 25% import tax when coming from China to the US. This small tweak, and the $36 billion of goods
it would impact, was the first volley in what’d later be known as the US-China trade war. The next rounds came quick: just weeks after,
the Trump administration initiated a smaller, second package, covering some $16 billion
in goods, then, in September, after a Chinese response, an absolutely massive package of
10% tariffs on some $200 billion. Finally, after further Chinese ac
tion, these
rates were raised to a crippling 25%. Now, a Chinese-made space heater that might’ve
sold for $48 would cost $60 or, more likely, a US distributor would look for suppliers
from other non-tariffed countries so that they could get prices back down to $48. The ultimate net effect of this was an 8.5%
reduction in trade from China to the US, and a 26.3% decline in the reverse. But perhaps more relevantly, this spat dethroned
China from its perch atop the list of US trading partners. Now r
anking higher was Canada, in the second
spot, and Mexico, as the new largest. But the trade war would be far from the end
of issues keeping China from the top. The next emerged not out of Washington, of
course, but from Wuhan. After headlines were dominated by the news
of a mystery novel Coronavirus in China, then by COVID’s global spread, then by the world’s
descent into lockdown, then by breakneck vaccine development, then by the shot’s wide-scale
roll-out across the developed world, summer 20
21’s headlines were dominated by supply
chain chaos. Armed with lockdown savings but still facing
barriers to spending them on restaurants, concerts, and plane tickets, American consumers
started buying lots and lots of things—physical, real-world products. COVID, however, was still exerting influence
meaning dockworkers and truck drivers in California were still getting sick, while their counterparts
in China, Vietnam, or India were still largely unvaccinated or vaccinated with less effective
s
hots, meaning stricter social distancing and lockdown restrictions were still in place,
blunting shipping and manufacturing itself. The net effect was what made it to the headlines:
factories struggled to produce fast enough, ships sat offshore for weeks waiting to get
unloaded, American store shelves sat empty as stock simply could not come fast enough. By late 2022 the trans-pacific capacity crunch
had largely dissipated, supply and demand had equalized, and container rates had nearly
returned
to 2019 levels, but supply chains were never able to fully repair as Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine wreaked havoc on global trade. Sanctions cut off supply to key metals, energy
and food costs rose globally, and marine and air cargo was rerouted to avoid the belligerent
nation. Meanwhile, today’s China is certainly not
the China it used to be. While perhaps a truism, up until recently,
rapid economic development was the decades-long norm, but the nation’s now entered a new
era. In the most concis
e narrative, one single
factor is attributed as the ultimate source of China’s unprecedented economic ascent:
low-cost manufacturing. China was a place where foreign firms could
effectively offshore manufacturing and save massively through low labor costs, but in
many ways, the country’s industrial sector became a victim of its own success. In twenty years the nation’s GDP per capita
rose ten times, and with that, quality of life improved massively. Major Chinese cities like Beijing, Shanghai,
o
r Shenzhen started featuring the same shops, restaurants, and hotels as Tokyo, London,
or New York; the luxury goods market exploded as an unprecedented number of millionaires
and billionaires were minted; and a genuine middle class developed, living a similar quality
of life as those in the US, Europe, or any developed nation. But to the outside, to the companies that
had previously offshored to China, this increase in purchasing power meant a dollar didn’t
go as far anymore within the People’s
Republic. Wages rose, and so too, in step, did manufacturing
costs. The peak of inbound foreign direct investment
to China has long passed as multinational enterprises have now focused elsewhere for
the lowest cost manufacturing, but this was of little concern to the nation as they were
able to parlay the wealth generated from this era into developing an impressive array of
home-grown businesses. There are behemoth e-commerce platforms like
JD.com and Alibaba; sprawling tech conglomerates like
Tencent and Huawei; unicorn start-ups
like DJI and Didi; even the first non-American social media platform to attain global mainstream
adoption with ByteDance’s TikTok. But TikTok is a rare exception: overwhelmingly,
the business China does with America is not through services—it’s with physical products. Physical products need to physically travel
to the American end consumer, but the problem that’s now coming into focus is that America
is really, really far from China. Shanghai is the world’s
busiest container
port while the combination of Los Angeles and Long Beach is the US’, so trips between
the two are about as common as they come, but they’re no small feat. From the moment the Chinese coast disappears
behind, a vessel won’t see Los Angeles for another eighteen days, assuming everything
goes right, which it often does not—even with massive improvements since 2021’s supply
chain chaos, major container carriers only range between 50% and 60% schedule reliability. Offshoring, just-i
n-time manufacturing, and
even globalization itself are all terms and phenomenons that largely developed in the
past thirty years. In fact, some experts consider the fall of
the Berlin Wall as the start of the era of peak globalization. But this era might, in retrospect, be considered
bookended by the trade war, COVID, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The world has returned to a more fractured
state and it’s worth remembering that prior to this conflict, Russia’s relationship
with Europe and
the US was not all that different from China’s today. Diplomatic relations are maintained, but they’re
tense. Certain respected western leaders now speak
of conflict with China—likely spurred by an invasion of Taiwan—as inevitable. So that’s to say, the world is already less
globalized than it was in 2017, and there are certain, concerningly possible events
that would make the trade war, COVID, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine look like
warmup laps. So, 2023, in the world of logistics, is ma
rked
by a consolidation of concerns: COVID and Ukraine exposed the vulnerabilities, and there’s
widespread concern that these could only be the start. The consensus, therefore, is that there are
essentially two options: one can fortify the globalized supply chain through building more
slack in the system—ordering components earlier, keeping more in stock, manufacturing
inventory earlier—but this comes with a very real, surprisingly significant cost. The other option is to remove the risk, remove
the physical and political gulf between the manufacturer and the market, and this option
has proved surprisingly popular. All that’s needed is an alternative, another
developing country on the other side of the Pacific where wages are low, and the workforce
is large—a country like Mexico. From a manufacturer’s point of view, Mexico’s
not perfect. Of 180 countries ranked by the Corruption
Perception Index, Mexico comes in at 128th. Of the 190 ranked by Ease of Doing Business,
Mexico ranks 60th.
Of the world’s fifty busiest sea ports,
Mexico is home to none—its largest, the port of Manzanillo, outpaced nearly six times
over by that of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Further complicating things, it’s hard to
get around Mexico—the jagged Sierra Madre ranges run from the country's northwest to
its southeast, parched deserts define much of the country’s north, and dense forestry
covers much of its south. The roads, rails, and bridges that cross these
mountain ranges and cut through desert and f
orest alike? Well Mexican infrastructure’s getting better,
but it still lags far behind China’s. But complicated perceptions, outdated assumptions,
and difficult internal transportation networks aside, Mexico is blessed with one simple geographic
gift that no country other than Canada can lay claim to—it shares a border with the
world’s largest economy. While the Rio Grande river isn’t actually
navigable, it’s home to one of North America’s most valuable ports. Connecting Texas and the Mexican s
tate of
Nuevo León is the World Trade International Bridge— it’s strictly commercial, 8-lanes
wide, it sees over 6,000 northbound trucks cross it every single day, and since its construction
in 2000, it has never been busier. As of 2022, the inland port ranks first among
American points of entry in trade value, and all this increased importance and stacking
traffic is by and large due to what manufacturing in Northern Mexico has to offer that China
simply can’t—speed and flexibility at low cost.
About 150 miles or 250 kilometers down Mexico’s
highway 85 and just outside the small city of Salinas Victoria, is this—a barren dirt
lot. Except, it’s not actually a barren dirt
lot, this is Hofusan Industrial Park—a 200-acre complex constructed by a private Chinese-Mexican
partnership designed to pull in Chinese manufacturers. It’s so new, with construction beginning
in 2017, that satellite maps have yet to capture the development, but it’s there. And it’s bold. The master plan is to lure ove
r 100 Chinese
manufacturers to the gated park, build out a residential area to house employees, and
establish a host of services—from Chinese restaurants to hotels and hospitals. The idea is to build out a little slice of
China where labor is stable and Chinese executives and operators can feel somewhat at home. With much of the land still resembling a
construction site six years in, the sparkling master plan is far from a reality. But it is trending in the right direction. Hisense, an electroni
cs manufacturer, has
made the move. So too have furniture makers Kuka Home, Sunon,
and Manwah. And neighboring them are more Chinese manufactures:
Fawer, Skyish, Lizhong, Asenstar, Bellinturf have all bought into the project. The incentives, especially since the opening
of the trade war that’s made manufacturing in Mexico more cost competitive, are just
too strong. Even without the restaurants, shops, and housing
that’s supposed to make the move more appealing and the transition smoother, Chines
e companies
are taking the leap—inside the gates of Hofusan Park, and outside them too. The tech company Lenovo, for instance, has
been manufacturing just outside of Monterrey for over a decade. And in 2022 alone, 44 separate Asian companies
opened new manufacturing spaces in Mexico, with 9 of the 10 largest being Chinese-owned,
and 7 of them opening in the state of Nuevo León. Zooming out from the state, this is a graph
of Chinese investment in Mexico: the skyward trajectory of investment is si
mply unmistakable. While concerns over security and capable infrastructure
still loom, the deal is too good to wait on. Of course, a few dozen companies relocating
across a decade-plus doesn’t necessarily in itself signal the rise of Mexico as the
world’s factory or that China’s relinquishing the role or that this is the end of offshoring
as we know it. Right now, the sample size is small. But the reasons companies are moving to Mexico
aren’t going away, and the appeal of manufacturing in Mexico
extends beyond China. While China might be new to northern Mexico,
Japan isn’t, South Korea isn’t, and the US isn’t. To industrial manufacturers, the region’s
value has been well understood for decades. Years before the establishment of NAFTA, Mexico
worked to maximize the appeal of its lower costs of labor and proximity to the US by
setting up the Maquiladora system—essentially low-cost, tax-advantaged factories owned by
foreign companies that state officials hoped would tamp down unemployment
and entice foreign
investment. With the arrival of free trade agreements,
these factories exploded in number. Northern Mexico first experienced the invigorating
arrival of auto companies like KIA, Toyota, BMW, Ford, and Audi among others. Then came the rest, as Lego, Samsung, LG,
3M, GE and countless other recognizable brands moved into the region. Their collective arrival transformed the Mexican
economy. In a 2012 analysis of Maquiladoras, some 5,055
existed across the country, mostly in the n
orth, and the factories employed just over
2 million Mexicans. The value of these turnkey factories persist
too, as they’ve helped to counter narratives of Mexican states being too dangerous and
unpredictable for business, to places ripe and ready to establish a new manufacturing
hub for companies spanning the globe. What Mexico has had to offer in recent decades
has proved too good to pass up on. The factories already exist; the wages—though
higher than some eastern developing countries—are low
; and by being here, not only are tariffs
now out of the picture, but companies are also relocating to a western business environment
where patent and IP protection is stronger, political risk is lower, and the negative
optics of offshoring are minimized. Simply put, beyond what’s pushing Chinese
manufactures abroad, Mexico itself has developed tremendous pull. Automotive and electronic manufacturers from
the world over made Northern Mexico a home away from home decades ago, fundamentally
transf
orming the Mexican economy and creating a mutually beneficial system for the country
and company that shows few signs of slowing. China’s simply the most recent to recognize
the profound appeal. So it’s got the geography, it’s got the
labor, it’s got the demand, seemingly all the pieces are in place for an economic explosion
except for, critically, a plan. President López Obrador and the federal government
have been largely absent in the industrial sector—most of the work to actually attract
and
incentivize the manufacturing industry has occurred on a state level. States like Nuevo León have long focused
on developing their manufacturing industries—building industrial parks, offering financial incentives,
coordinating with incoming manufacturers—and it’s worked. Despite sitting number seven in terms of population,
Nuevo León is third on GDP—beaten only by Mexico City and the state that surrounds
it. That means the state’s per capita GDP is
similar to that of Malaysia or Greece, and Nue
vo León is generally one of the safest
Mexican states—on par with many areas of the US. For all these reasons, Monterrey has become
the country’s second largest center of wealth, after the capital, featuring the tallest skyscraper
in Latin America, one of the most modern metro systems in North America, and a dazzling array
of upscale hotels and restaurants. Other northern Mexican states have followed
suit, working to develop their own US-focused manufacturing industries, but still, inextricably,
the country’s current leadership fails to grasp the opportunity of the moment. The president has been widely criticized for
his lack of focus on the country’s industrial sector during what could turn out to be its
most pivotal years. In fairness, though, he’s been focused on
fighting crime. This is justified—the country is experiencing
a crippling wave of violence that has pushed its homicide rate up to the eighth highest
in the world—but he’s still been largely ineffective at blunting it. The
US is also worried about crime in Mexico
because of its downstream effect. Republicans surveyed ahead of the 2022 US
midterms indicated that immigration was their number two issue, behind only the economy. American conservatives in particular are worried
about the exceptional number of migrants crossing the US-Mexico border through both official
and unofficial channels, and a major impetus of this surge is violence. Of course, taking it back one step further,
a major impetus of violence is pover
ty—that’s a relationship that academics have established
time and time again—and poverty is also a driver of immigration itself. Therefore, you improve the economy, you improve
the violence, you reduce the volume of immigrants at the border. Mexican manufacturing is rarely taking the
place of American manufacturing these days—rather, it’s taking the place of Chinese manufacturing,
so it’s trading a distant country with a dubious record respecting human rights and
intellectual property for a cult
urally and politically allied neighbor. This serves the US’ global goals and then
on top of that, the economic boon the phenomenon spurs helps solve other American goals. It is, through and through, a virtuous cycle,
so the only shame is that Mexican and American federal authorities have yet to fully recognize
that. This industry can be a solution to the problems
that officials on both sides say they need to focus on first, but unfortunately, there’s
been a long history on both sides of attackin
g symptoms, rather than actual causes. Mexico is already a powerhouse, middle-income
industrial economy with incredible geography and an enormous educated labor pool and it
seems like it’s finally getting some of the economic expansion it deserves, but this
has largely happened in spite of ineffective infrastructure, in spite of crippling violence,
in spite of a complacent government, in spite of so many constraints. So a future where Mexican manufacturing grows
“thanks to…” something is tantali
zing. Just imagine a future where Mexico recognized
its potential as strongly as China did four decades ago. Some of the most important issues of the moment
are also some of the most politicized ones, and media organizations play a part in shaping
that reality. Advertising revenue is driven by clicks, clicks
are driven by emotion, and emotion is driven by appealing to what people care most about—that’s
a big reason why media outlets are more biased than ever. You get a conservative to click by f
eeding
them the issues conservatives want to hear about, you get a liberal to click by feeding
them the issues liberals want to hear about which, unfortunately, is just a better monetization
strategy than accurately portraying reality. We actually made a whole video about this
exact issue and it’s something I encountered with this video when trying to get accurate
information about just how significant the current surge in immigration is. But to fix that I turned to was our sponsor,
Ground News.
It’s kind of an amazing concept: each day,
they process nearly 60,000 news articles and aggregate multiple stories on the same subject
from multiple outlets and give you a sense of the political bias and factual record of
each source. This way you get an idea of how the same reality
gets portrayed differently depending on who’s writing about it. Another feature I love is Blindspot—it shows
you the stories that the other side of the political spectrum is talking about but that
you likely haven’t
heard about given the political bias of your media diet helping
address the very issue with partisan-based clickbait I mentioned earlier. You can see EXACTLY what conservatives and
liberals are seeing in real time… this story about a possible export restriction to China
only has 15% left-leaning coverage, while this story about Chinese reports on Indian
borders has no right-leaning coverage. Ground News has really come to be a crucial
research tool for making our videos and it’s also become one
of my favorite ways to consume
the news as I want to make sure I’m using that time to actually learn about the world—not
just to make myself feel good by reading stories designed to feed my own political bias. So if you want to add this crucial bias-correcting
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Comments
This comment section is restoring my faith in humanity.
As an Indian I wish Mexican People prosperity and development .
As an American, I'd buy "Made In Mexico" over "Made In China" any day! Love our southern neighbor.
As an American, 100+ days ago I started learning Spanish. Mexico 🇲🇽 is the future
Mexico is one of the largest producers of automobiles in the world, just behind Germany. Its manufacturing capabilities were never in doubt.
I wish the very best for Mexico, it has a behemoth economy, great culture, food, music and people. They deserve the best lifestyle possible.
As an exporting US manufacturer in Mexico I love how this video encapsulates & presents the situation. I was only bothered that Baja California wasn't mentioned at all; Tijuana and Mexicali have manufacturing capabilities similar to Monterrey but with actual border crossings in both cities crossing tons of goods & products nonstop
As a Mexican American, seeing how much love Americans have for my birth nation is really surprising. I only wish the Mexican government could get their act together
I'm Mexican, and I work in help desk. I've chatted with fellow colleagues who work from India and the Philippines. We compare our salaries in US dollars. Both Indians and Filipinos are surprised of how much less money we get than the do for doing the same outsourced job.
To my neighbors in Mexico I hope we can work closer together 🇺🇸🤝 🇲🇽
Go Mexico! Many of us Americans have your back we love you and wish you nothing but the best! ❤
Rooting for Mexico 🇲🇽 here in Us 🇺🇸 … so many good people in Mexico
I do honestly prefer doing more with importing with mexico, our neighbor. So many people in the US have ancestry there, speak the language, and even still have family there. Though, I really want to see Mexican companies spring up. I don't want to just buy chinese products from Mexico. I want to see Mexico flourish.
I'm from Juárez and this city is 100% manufacturing. Really hope the government capitalize this opportunity and in a few decades Mexico is a manufacturing leader not because of geography, but because of the manufacturing quality and the capacity to create innovative solutions. I'm doing my part working in the industry
Props to mexico from zambia 🇿🇲 ❤🇲🇽
As an Asian living in the U.S, I hope this economic cooperation continues. Those made in Mexico Fender Stratocasters are awesome for the price.👌🏽
I live in Monterrey and can say that the impact of foreign investment in manufacturing has been really transformative to the region. However what I think this video fails to address is that it has increased inequality and cost of living for a lot of people. The opportunities created by these companies are not equal for everyone, and the government in Nuevo Leon has failed to address the issues of housing, transportation and enviromental concerns for the local population.
Mexico is doing a great job in rapidly becoming a manufacturing super hub. They are manufacturing literally everything in recent times, from Prismacolours to automobiles. Hope they can sustain their growth in the long run and become even more prosperous. Lots of love from India
There's a city called Pesquería (Fishery) which was in decay, little employment, crime, the youth leaving, and so on. Until some Korean companies decided to move part of their manufacturing there; stores with Korean products started appearing to satisfy the nostalgia of expat workers. Now the city is flourishing and it is nicknamed with love "Peskorea". Also Asian expats often say they are from Chinaloa from the State of Sinaloa x China.
As an American with many Mexican friends made working together in the restaurant industry, I want nothing more than to see Mexico and its people succeed and prosper. In my experience, they're wonderful, generous, hardworking people who deserve nothing but the best. I hope the Mexican government seizes the economic opportunity while the time is still ripe, or gets filled with people willing and able to do just that. They could easily become one of the most economically and geopolitically important nations on the planet if they play their cards right.