Did NAFTA ever benefit ANYBODY?

[Becker]

I am naive and uninformed about this, but I've heard nobody say good things about it.

Protectionists say it destroyed US jobs.
Liberals say it exploited Mexican labor.
Some even say it made Mexican labor even cheaper.
Libertarians say it wasn't true free trade. (ok, so it wasn't perfect, but isn't any freedom better than none?)
Nationalists say it undermined our borders (ok, whatever)

What companies or industries actually profited from NAFTA? It can't be nobody, or else it would've never been passed.
Did NAFTA allow any small businesses to cross borders easily and share the benefits of what larger corporations were able to enjoy?

[libertyjam]

Pretty much every industry sector with companies involved with manufacturing operations benefited from NAFTA by opening maquiladoras in Mexico.
That is to say the only ones who benefited were the companies and politicians. Who lost on the deal? Communities, workers (on both sides of the border), and the environment.

There is a long list of U.S. based multi-nationals including Fortune 500 companies who run Mexico’s maquiladora factories. Mexico’s Maquila Portal, stated how many factories and how many workers were involved in 2006.


NAFTA has been a disaster for the working people and the communities in which they live in all three nations. Today we clearly see that the results of NAFTA have led to a much weaker America with devastated and shuttered manufacturing communities. Mexican wages have dropped, and almost 20 million more Mexicans now live in poverty. American business leaders have been quick to seize upon the opportunity to take advantage of these desperate workers.

It is common knowledge that many U.S. politicians get hefty campaign contributions from industry. The only NAFTA winners have been the companies and politicians.
http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=11355

Some examples of some of the 3000 companies/Brands that operate Maquiladoras in Mexico employing about 1.2 million workers. As of 2006, maquiladoras accounted for 45 percent of Mexico’s total exports.

Delphi, which split off from General Motors and remains a major auto supplier, has 66,000 workers and 51 maquiladora factories
Lear corporation 34,000 workers and 8 factories
General Electric 20,700 workers and 30 factories
Jabil Circuit 10,000 workers and 3 factories
Visteon 10,000 workers and 16 factories
Whirlpool 7,500 workers and 5 factories
Emerson Electric 5,678 workers and 7 factories
Motorola 5,290 workers and 2 factories
Honeywell 4,900 workers and 3 factories
Plantronics 3,600 workers and 5 factories
Bose 2,900 workers and 2 factories
Mattell 2,578 workers and 1 factory
General Motors
Ford
Ralph Loren, Tommy Hilfinger, Wrangler
IBM
Acer
American Axel

http://geography.about.com/od/urbaneconomicgeography/a/maquiladoras.htm
http://www.madeinmexicoinc.com/maquiladora-industry/
http://www.mexconnect.com/articles/8-what-is-a-maquiladora-manufacturing-in-mexico-the-mexican-in-bond-maquila-program
http://www.tacna.net/
http://www.umich.edu/~snre492/Jones/maquiladora.htm
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=104860
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Mexico-violence-hits-U-S-maquiladora-858446.php
www.law.fsu.edu/journals/transnational/vol15_1/Kagan.pdf

[Becker]

thanks, good start.

Now, of these companies who benefited, were they mostly US companies who benefited from Mexican labor? Or are there some which are Mexican companies coming up here?

Why did it hurt both sides of the border? Didn't it give Mexicans jobs they otherwise wouldn't have ? Or were they exempt from normal labor laws (if that was so, is it still a border problem?)

Did anything come from Mexico as a result that hurt Americans?



Pretty much every industry sector with companies involved with manufacturing operations benefited from NAFTA by opening maquiladoras in Mexico.
That is to say the only ones who benefited were the companies and politicians. Who lost on the deal? Communities, workers (on both sides of the border), and the environment.

There is a long list of U.S. based multi-nationals including Fortune 500 companies who run Mexico’s maquiladora factories. Mexico’s Maquila Portal, stated how many factories and how many workers were involved in 2006.


http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=11355

Some examples of some of the 3000 companies/Brands that operate Maquiladoras in Mexico employing about 1.2 million workers. As of 2006, maquiladoras accounted for 45 percent of Mexico’s total exports.

Delphi, which split off from General Motors and remains a major auto supplier, has 66,000 workers and 51 maquiladora factories
Lear corporation 34,000 workers and 8 factories
General Electric 20,700 workers and 30 factories
Jabil Circuit 10,000 workers and 3 factories
Visteon 10,000 workers and 16 factories
Whirlpool 7,500 workers and 5 factories
Emerson Electric 5,678 workers and 7 factories
Motorola 5,290 workers and 2 factories
Honeywell 4,900 workers and 3 factories
Plantronics 3,600 workers and 5 factories
Bose 2,900 workers and 2 factories
Mattell 2,578 workers and 1 factory
General Motors
Ford
Ralph Loren, Tommy Hilfinger, Wrangler
IBM
Acer
American Axel

http://geography.about.com/od/urbaneconomicgeography/a/maquiladoras.htm
http://www.madeinmexicoinc.com/maquiladora-industry/
http://www.mexconnect.com/articles/8-what-is-a-maquiladora-manufacturing-in-mexico-the-mexican-in-bond-maquila-program
http://www.tacna.net/
http://www.umich.edu/~snre492/Jones/maquiladora.htm
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=104860
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Mexico-violence-hits-U-S-maquiladora-858446.php
www.law.fsu.edu/journals/transnational/vol15_1/Kagan.pdf

[kpitcher]

Let me give you a short story on someone it did benefit. I live in an area about 2 hours from Chicago, lots of 2nd homes on lakes. A nice quiet rural-ish area. Not many years ago a guy recently built a nice big second home on a lake because of NAFTA, so I guess the few contractors in the area benefited slightly. He works for a steel company. Ford moved a plant to Mexico and since they supply Ford they needed to move some operations to just down the road from Ford. He said they had thousands of people waiting in line to apply for work. The Mexicans knew Americans were unionized so they wanted to be a union, the guy building the house was the one handling negotiations. The new workers demanded something like 13 cents an hour. With employee costs to the company this would be less than a dollar an hour in actual expense. He explained how he couldn't let them get what they asked for up front, it'd show corporate weakness. He got it down to 11 cents an hour.

[libertyjam]

Another story about Ford operating Maqui's in Mexico, though just a few years prior to NAFTA the only improvement is that maybe they haven't shot any workers since then.

Mexico's unions, controlled by the ruling party, help attract export firms with
solidarity pacts that, since 1988, have continued to hold wage increases below
the inflation rate. A recently announced pact continues this policy through
1993. This summer, a Mexican court upheld Volkswagen's discharge of 14,000
employees who repudiated a contract negotiated by the union's
government-sponsored leadership. In 1987, Ford Motor Company renounced its union
contract, discharged 3,400 Mexican employees, and then rehired them with a new
union contract at reduced wages and benefits. When workers protested in support
of dissident union leadership, gunmen hired by the official union shot workers
at random inside the Ford factory. Then 1,000 state police entered the plant to
enforce the new contract.

http://prospect.org/article/continental-drift-nafta-and-its-aftershocks
http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=11355

[Becker]

Another story about Ford operating Maqui's in Mexico, though just a few years prior to NAFTA the only improvement is that maybe they haven't shot any workers since then.

Mexico's unions, controlled by the ruling party, help attract export firms with
solidarity pacts that, since 1988, have continued to hold wage increases below
the inflation rate. A recently announced pact continues this policy through
1993. This summer, a Mexican court upheld Volkswagen's discharge of 14,000
employees who repudiated a contract negotiated by the union's
government-sponsored leadership. In 1987, Ford Motor Company renounced its union
contract, discharged 3,400 Mexican employees, and then rehired them with a new
union contract at reduced wages and benefits. When workers protested in support
of dissident union leadership, gunmen hired by the official union shot workers
at random inside the Ford factory. Then 1,000 state police entered the plant to
enforce the new contract.

http://prospect.org/article/continental-drift-nafta-and-its-aftershocks
http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=11355

wait, isn't lack of wage increases good because it allows more people to be employed?

[Becker]

Let me give you a short story on someone it did benefit. I live in an area about 2 hours from Chicago, lots of 2nd homes on lakes. A nice quiet rural-ish area. Not many years ago a guy recently built a nice big second home on a lake because of NAFTA, so I guess the few contractors in the area benefited slightly. He works for a steel company. Ford moved a plant to Mexico and since they supply Ford they needed to move some operations to just down the road from Ford. He said they had thousands of people waiting in line to apply for work. The Mexicans knew Americans were unionized so they wanted to be a union, the guy building the house was the one handling negotiations. The new workers demanded something like 13 cents an hour. With employee costs to the company this would be less than a dollar an hour in actual expense. He explained how he couldn't let them get what they asked for up front, it'd show corporate weakness. He got it down to 11 cents an hour.

you're talking about workers for Ford, down in Mexico? Or workers for his house?

[libertyjam]

wait, isn't lack of wage increases good because it allows more people to be employed?

Do you consider shooting random workers to enforce wage controls a good thing?

Does any of the following from just the first article that you haven't looked at sound like something you want to support?

The impoverished maquiladora workers really have few choices and are forced to choose between working for starvation wages and not having employment at all. A husband and a wife working full time jobs in these factories still cannot earn enough money to decently support a family of four. It is economic subjugation. In too many instances, workers put in gruelling 10 hour shifts 6 days a week doing difficult unhealthy jobs at an unreasonable work pace often around hazardous and toxic elements.

During the 1980’s, the American auto industry beginning to shift large numbers of America’s premier jobs to oppressed foreign workers. Labor activists began speaking out and taking groups of autoworkers to Detroit to stage protests and demonstrations. They did TV and radio shows and confronted G.M.’s CEO Roger Smith at G.M. stockholder meetings. They raised issues such as corporate restructuring that was done without regard to social consequences, the practice of apartheid in G.M.’s plants in South Africa or the exploitation of foreign workers.

On the stockholder floor, labor activists would challenge and debate Smith and tell him that his Mexican workers were falling over on the assembly lines from hunger. He once shot back that wasn’t true and claimed that G.M. was furnishing one meal per day to these workers. That statement was immediately picked up and then quickly forgotten by the national press. The truth was that G.M. was having a yearly labor turnover rate of almost 90 percent, because workers couldn’t afford the meagre costs necessary for work including food, clothing and transportation expenses.

Maquiladora plants in general have an especially dismal record of exploitation relative to women and children. It has not been uncommon to find young children as young as 12 years old working in these factories under forged documents.

In 1999 the net wage for the average maquiladora worker was $55.77 per week, after 4 percent union dues of $2.32. The weekly minimum living expense for one worker was $54. In addition to the pathetic wages and disregarded labor standards, the living and health conditions around these maquiladora factories are beyond belief.

A recent New York Times article said that because these workers have no financial resources, a nutritious meal for their family is an unattainable luxury. Many live in a squalid grid of dirt streets, rotting garbage, swamps of open sewers with unsafe water, overburdened or none existent schools and violence against the women.

A December 2007 Global Exchange article, discussing maquiladoras since NAFTA, discussed how worker settlements were sprouting up around these factories with housing made from cardboard, sticks and sheet metal. These shanties had neither sufficient clean water nor adequate sewage systems. The article talked of sweatshop blue jean maquiladoras making millions of dollars off their workers, including children under the age of 11 and of young women workers suffering sexual harassment. It told of laborers putting in 12-hour workdays producing thousands of pairs of Polo Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and Wrangler jeans per week for weekly wages of 700 pesos ($53 U.S.). These jeans were being sold in Los Angeles stores for 1000 pesos ($75 U.S.) per pair.

These jean factories pollute the local water. The stone washing and bleaching leaves highly toxic wastewater with heavy metals in the effluent. The article stated that the runoff makes the nearby farm fields become iridescent and radiates a metallic blue because of this chemical run-off.

An article titled "Maquila Neoslavery" by journalist and human rights activist Gary MacEoin in the National Catholic Reporter, noted that a typical maquila 9-hour day quota for a woman is to iron 1,200 shirts. MacEoin said “few survive the unhealthy working conditions, poor ventilation, verbal abuse, strip searches, and sexual harassment for more them six or seven years.

Dr. Ruth Rosenbaum, executive director CREA, said the wages do not enable them to meet basic human needs of their family for nutrition, housing, clothing, and non-consumables and that one maquiladora worker provides only 19.8 percent of what a family of four needs to live.

Author Rachel Stohr talked of the brutal treatment, the wage slavery, of how the Mexican government gains economically from these factories and how the enforcement of Mexican labor laws is just not happening in a 2004 University of New Mexico story.

To the U.S. companies who run maquiladora factories, the workers are expendable and only the financial investment is important. According to Rev. David Schilling, director of ICCR’s Global Corporate Accountability Program, for years religious institutional investors have been pressing corporations to pay their Mexican employees a sustainable living wage.

Martha Ojeda, director of Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras, said “they work long productive hours for the world’s biggest corporations and still cannot provide the most basic needs for their families, they cannot afford to consume the items they produce”.

Brian Chasnoff wrote in the Comite Fronterizo de Obreros that the Immigration Clinic of San Jose says that it hears of so much rape in the maquiladoras that it is disgusting.

[wgadget]

YAY, WHIRLPOOL..

Herman Cain attended the post-NAFTA meeting in 2007!

Yahoo!

P.S. Go to the Opposing Candidates forum to read more. This MUST be exposed.

[Demigod]

Do you consider shooting random workers to enforce wage controls a good thing?

Does any of the following from just the first article that you haven't looked at sound like something you want to support?

The impoverished maquiladora workers really have few choices and are forced to choose between working for starvation wages and not having employment at all. A husband and a wife working full time jobs in these factories still cannot earn enough money to decently support a family of four. It is economic subjugation. In too many instances, workers put in gruelling 10 hour shifts 6 days a week doing difficult unhealthy jobs at an unreasonable work pace often around hazardous and toxic elements.

During the 1980’s, the American auto industry beginning to shift large numbers of America’s premier jobs to oppressed foreign workers. Labor activists began speaking out and taking groups of autoworkers to Detroit to stage protests and demonstrations. They did TV and radio shows and confronted G.M.’s CEO Roger Smith at G.M. stockholder meetings. They raised issues such as corporate restructuring that was done without regard to social consequences, the practice of apartheid in G.M.’s plants in South Africa or the exploitation of foreign workers.

On the stockholder floor, labor activists would challenge and debate Smith and tell him that his Mexican workers were falling over on the assembly lines from hunger. He once shot back that wasn’t true and claimed that G.M. was furnishing one meal per day to these workers. That statement was immediately picked up and then quickly forgotten by the national press. The truth was that G.M. was having a yearly labor turnover rate of almost 90 percent, because workers couldn’t afford the meagre costs necessary for work including food, clothing and transportation expenses.

Maquiladora plants in general have an especially dismal record of exploitation relative to women and children. It has not been uncommon to find young children as young as 12 years old working in these factories under forged documents.

In 1999 the net wage for the average maquiladora worker was $55.77 per week, after 4 percent union dues of $2.32. The weekly minimum living expense for one worker was $54. In addition to the pathetic wages and disregarded labor standards, the living and health conditions around these maquiladora factories are beyond belief.

A recent New York Times article said that because these workers have no financial resources, a nutritious meal for their family is an unattainable luxury. Many live in a squalid grid of dirt streets, rotting garbage, swamps of open sewers with unsafe water, overburdened or none existent schools and violence against the women.

A December 2007 Global Exchange article, discussing maquiladoras since NAFTA, discussed how worker settlements were sprouting up around these factories with housing made from cardboard, sticks and sheet metal. These shanties had neither sufficient clean water nor adequate sewage systems. The article talked of sweatshop blue jean maquiladoras making millions of dollars off their workers, including children under the age of 11 and of young women workers suffering sexual harassment. It told of laborers putting in 12-hour workdays producing thousands of pairs of Polo Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and Wrangler jeans per week for weekly wages of 700 pesos ($53 U.S.). These jeans were being sold in Los Angeles stores for 1000 pesos ($75 U.S.) per pair.

These jean factories pollute the local water. The stone washing and bleaching leaves highly toxic wastewater with heavy metals in the effluent. The article stated that the runoff makes the nearby farm fields become iridescent and radiates a metallic blue because of this chemical run-off.

An article titled "Maquila Neoslavery" by journalist and human rights activist Gary MacEoin in the National Catholic Reporter, noted that a typical maquila 9-hour day quota for a woman is to iron 1,200 shirts. MacEoin said “few survive the unhealthy working conditions, poor ventilation, verbal abuse, strip searches, and sexual harassment for more them six or seven years.

Dr. Ruth Rosenbaum, executive director CREA, said the wages do not enable them to meet basic human needs of their family for nutrition, housing, clothing, and non-consumables and that one maquiladora worker provides only 19.8 percent of what a family of four needs to live.

Author Rachel Stohr talked of the brutal treatment, the wage slavery, of how the Mexican government gains economically from these factories and how the enforcement of Mexican labor laws is just not happening in a 2004 University of New Mexico story.

To the U.S. companies who run maquiladora factories, the workers are expendable and only the financial investment is important. According to Rev. David Schilling, director of ICCR’s Global Corporate Accountability Program, for years religious institutional investors have been pressing corporations to pay their Mexican employees a sustainable living wage.

Martha Ojeda, director of Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras, said “they work long productive hours for the world’s biggest corporations and still cannot provide the most basic needs for their families, they cannot afford to consume the items they produce”.

Brian Chasnoff wrote in the Comite Fronterizo de Obreros that the Immigration Clinic of San Jose says that it hears of so much rape in the maquiladoras that it is disgusting.


250+ dollars pay per month is not that bad.You can find plenty of workers in Europe that will work for 250+ dollars.

And this workers will be educated and with high productivity.Also with the free trade zones.They will be tax free for 1-4 years and then will pay from 5-10% tax depending on the country.

They will not leave in cardboard boxes they will live in apartments and houses.And if both parents work and earn 600+ dollars a month together they can take care of their family as well.

[Becker]

Do you consider shooting random workers to enforce wage controls a good thing?


No. Just because I don't approve of the way they enforce it, doesn't mean I have to disagree with wage control.



Does any of the following from just the first article that you haven't looked at sound like something you want to support?


Do I want to support giving people jobs or not giving people jobs?



The impoverished maquiladora workers really have few choices and are forced to choose between working for starvation wages and not having employment at all.


I take it it was my fault they started out with no employment at all, and we blame people for giving them a job that isn't perfect?
Nobody is forced to make the choice, they choose what is best for them.



A husband and a wife working full time jobs in these factories still cannot earn enough money to decently support a family of four.


How better were they before?



It is economic subjugation. In too many instances, workers put in gruelling 10 hour shifts 6 days a week doing difficult unhealthy jobs at an unreasonable work pace often around hazardous and toxic elements.


Nobody is forcing them to.



During the 1980’s, the American auto industry beginning to shift large numbers of America’s premier jobs to oppressed foreign workers.


SO Americans work less, jobless oppressed foreigners get paid, who's the loser?



Labor activists began speaking out and taking groups of autoworkers to Detroit to stage protests and demonstrations. They did TV and radio shows and confronted G.M.’s CEO Roger Smith at G.M. stockholder meetings. They raised issues such as corporate restructuring that was done without regard to social consequences, the practice of apartheid in G.M.’s plants in South Africa or the exploitation of foreign workers.

On the stockholder floor, labor activists would challenge and debate Smith and tell him that his Mexican workers were falling over on the assembly lines from hunger. He once shot back that wasn’t true and claimed that G.M. was furnishing one meal per day to these workers. That statement was immediately picked up and then quickly forgotten by the national press. The truth was that G.M. was having a yearly labor turnover rate of almost 90 percent, because workers couldn’t afford the meagre costs necessary for work including food, clothing and transportation expenses.

Maquiladora plants in general have an especially dismal record of exploitation relative to women and children. It has not been uncommon to find young children as young as 12 years old working in these factories under forged documents.


I'll ask you again: ARE THEY FORCED TO WORK OTHERWISE BE KILLED? or just work for low pay otherwise no work & no pay?

are you a protectionist that believes low skill jobs children can do should be left for Americans at a high pay? Or are you willing to bring in those slave conditions to America?

[libertyjam]

250+ dollars pay per month is not that bad.You can find plenty of workers in Europe that will work for 250+ dollars.

And this workers will be educated and with high productivity.Also with the free trade zones.They will be tax free for 1-4 years and then will pay from 5-10% tax depending on the country.

They will not leave in cardboard boxes they will live in apartments and houses.And if both parents work and earn 600+ dollars a month together they can take care of their family as well.

So, that must be with government or industry provided (not just subsidized) housing, healthcare, education. nor does $54 a week equate to $250/ mnth, nor does 2 x 250 = $600, so what is the total hourly cost to the company of each worker (what corps actually look at)? It would have to be much more than $1/hr to provide all that in Europe.

[libertyjam]

No. Just because I don't approve of the way they enforce it, doesn't mean I have to disagree with wage control.



Do I want to support giving people jobs or not giving people jobs?



I take it it was my fault they started out with no employment at all, and we blame people for giving them a job that isn't perfect?
Nobody is forced to make the choice, they choose what is best for them.



How better were they before?



Nobody is forcing them to.



SO Americans work less, jobless oppressed foreigners get paid, who's the loser?



I'll ask you again: ARE THEY FORCED TO WORK OTHERWISE BE KILLED? or just work for low pay otherwise no work & no pay?

are you a protectionist that believes low skill jobs children can do should be left for Americans at a high pay? Or are you willing to bring in those slave conditions to America?

Shit, you like living off the backs of slave labor so much why don't you just go ahead and bring slavery back to the US? It isn't me who is advocating bringing slave conditions to the US, those very words you just spoke are advocating it. No, I'm afraid Brian had you pegged correctly.

[Demigod]

So, that must be with government or industry provided (not just subsidized) housing, healthcare, education. nor does $54 a week equate to $250/ mnth, nor does 2 x 250 = $600, so what is the total hourly cost to the company of each worker (what corps actually look at)? It would have to be much more than $1/hr to provide all that in Europe.


My numbers are bigger so to fit the European situation better.

I think that for a worker that will work from 7:30 am to 4 pm/6 days a week in a car company like FORD you would pay 650-750$ a month per employee with every tax.

The Worker would be receiving around a 400+ $ paycheck a month.

But you would get no import tax cause of free trade in Europe,no bribes needed for government,an educated productive workforce,good infrastructure and very low taxes.


Also there is no such thing as housing subsides in Europe.

[Becker]

Shit, you like living off the backs of slave labor so much why don't you just go ahead and bring slavery back to the US? It isn't me who is advocating bringing slave conditions to the US, those very words you just spoke are advocating it. No, I'm afraid Brian had you pegged correctly.

there's a clear difference between forcing a person to work by threat of death or active torturing, and merely taking advantage of the fact they were needy. In the latter case, leaving them alone will not benefit them monetarily, nor will you add actively physical pain and suffering.

[Knighted]

Free trade agreements are net positive. Take the recent free trade agreements passed by Congress. Prior to their passage, the countries involved were imposing enormous import tariffs on American products. When American products face huge import tariffs, one of two things happens:

1) The American company relocates its business to that country's shores in order to offer its products at a more affordable rate to local consumers by avoiding the import tariffs, taking many jobs out of America and relocating them to said country. This is the only way for the company's products to be competitive in that country.

2) The American company keeps its business in America, but is forced to sell its product at exorbitant prices to consumers in said country that imposes import tariffs. This means very few consumers in that country will by the product due to high prices, which means less workers will be needed in America to produce those products. Chalk up another major loss of potential jobs.

[Byrgen]

Please watch this Libertyjam.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx5fzBNO4l4

If you feel for their plight, offer them a better job yourself, but never restrict them from working. That is immoral to the core.

[Becker]

Free trade agreements are net positive.


This is exactly what we mean by broken window fallacy, you're looking at the big picture and telling me "the community has a net gain", sorry, I don't care about other people, I care about ME AND MY MONEY (notice, I didn't say job).



Take the recent free trade agreements passed by Congress. Prior to their passage, the countries involved were imposing enormous import tariffs on American products. When American products face huge import tariffs, one of two things happens:

1) The American company relocates its business to that country's shores in order to offer its products at a more affordable rate to local consumers by avoiding the import tariffs, taking many jobs out of America and relocating them to said country. This is the only way for the company's products to be competitive in that country.


sounds good.




2) The American company keeps its business in America, but is forced to sell its product at exorbitant prices to consumers in said country that imposes import tariffs. This means very few consumers in that country will by the product due to high prices, which means less workers will be needed in America to produce those products. Chalk up another major loss of potential jobs.

I guess you're saying, either American companies export goods for profit, or they'll stop making them once it's saturated domestically. In either case, Americans will lose jobs if they are not flexible to the industry changes.

Are there cases where factories are built in foreign countries only to sell the products to that country, and not to import them into US to sell to Americans? If that was what happened, I don't think Americans care about what companies do to other countries, as long as they here have nothing to do with them.