Head, hits desk. Eric Loomis (hat tip: Andrew Reeves) just repeated the Trump lie that Ford is moving jobs to Mexico. Ford is expanding production in Mexico, it is true. But Ford is keeping up production in the United States and Ford would be expanding production in Mexico even without NAFTA.
The biggest piece of evidence for this is that Ford says so. But hell, don’t trust them. Look at what NAFTA changed.
Before NAFTA, the U.S. tariff on small cars was only 2.5%. That is not nothing, but nor is it enough to compensate for lower labor costs. Note that the real exchange rate of the peso has fallen by 5.4% since the beginning of the year. 2½ percent is barely a speed bump. Now, if you want to argue about NAFTA, you can argue about the 25% tariff that the United States imposed on trucks. That was a real tariff. But Ford isn’t moving truck production; it’s moving small cars. And NAFTA has fuck-all to do with that.
There is a discussion to be had about NAFTA. But I must wonder if Loomis is willing to have it in good faith.
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