Yesterday President Trump was able to announce that his Administration has reached an “Agreement in Principle” that replaces the Mexico portion of the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1991. Which should have been known as the United States Government suicide pact for the U.S. Citizen working class. How many U.S. companies, and their workers, were sacrificed on this altar of anti-American globalism? It’s hard to believe that We The People were swindled and tricked in to believing this was a great deal for the American people.
I wrote about the history of NAFTA in this blog a little over two years ago during the Presidential Primary Pageant-https://4pba.com/trade-wars-its-time-to-fight-back/?v=7516fd43adaa The point of that article was how both Mexico AND Canada had “bent us over” and given it to the U.S. Citizen worker from the year it was enacted until present.
If you, or someone in your immediate family/circle, haven’t been involved in the manufacturing sector over the last two+ decades, you are probably unaware of how deeply NAFTA hurt this Country. Well, I can tell you it has been devastating on a number of levels. And the damage accelerated from Clinton, to Bush and then went in to “hyper-speed” during the Jarrett Administration. And who would guess that there is a piece of this that was driven by the bureaucratic “Deep State”? Anybody who was paying attention would.
I would like to share one personal exposure to this whole deal that I know was replicated over and over again. I just don’t know how many times? In the late 1990s I had a customer who was a parts manufacturer/supplier to General Electric Power Systems- Gas Turbine Operations. As part of GE dancing to the NAFTA tune, they initiated their new “Global Purchasing Initiative”(GPI), with an emphasis on purchasing equipment and components manufactured in Mexico, as well as around the World. As part of this program, it was “suggested” to my customer, who was at that time operating in the Southeastern U.S. that they might want to look in to setting up a parts manufacturing operation in Mexico.
The Sales Director for my customer told me that they were informed that their ability to maintain their existing business with GE “could” be impacted by their willingness to establish this Mexico facility. Because at that time GE was dedicated to GPI, and if a competitor of my customer could provide product that was “off-shored” to help the GE Purchasing Team meet their GPI quotas, it might force GE to “reconsider” their relationship my customer. So, in 1999 my customer started the move to establish a parts manufacturing facility in Monterrey, Mexico. And seemingly from day one it was a rolling disaster.
Well, why would that be? Land was cheaper. Regulations were going to be less. Labor was going to be cheap and abundant. All of this was true. Sounds like a win-win-win situation, doesn’t it? Not so fast. As cumbersome as dealing with the government in the U.S. may be, at least the level of corruption is somewhat legally controlled. In Mexico, not so much, at EVERY level. And that was just the beginning of the 2+-year nightmare for my customer. I made two trips to the facility to help supervise the installation of some processing equipment I sold the customer and witnessed the “payola” operations personally. It made doing service work in a U.S. Union-controlled shop look like a picnic. Then you also had to deal with a “language barrier” because “foreign” companies were limited on the number of “foreign” workers they could use to build/start-up their facilities.
In late 2001, the company pulled the plug on this Mexico venture, without ever producing a single acceptable part, and by 2006 was totally eliminated as a GE supplier because they were no longer “competitive” in the products because they couldn’t meet their GPI quota numbers. And within a year there were two U.S. manufacturing facilities, employing a total of more than 500 skilled U.S. Citizen workers that disappeared. I have to wonder how many other parallel or similar stories are out there? Don’t you?
So yesterday, hopefully, marked the beginning of the end of 20+ years of national government-inflicted destruction to the U.S. industrial manufacturing sector. And it happened because for the first time in 30+ years we have a President who sees his first priority is the U.S. Citizen. I know that some may call this “tribalism” and some will call it “protectionism”. But to me, I call it Patriotism, and if you’re not fighting for it, we’re just never going to win! #MAGA
God Bless America! And America, please Bless God again!
