American industry ‘packed up and left en masse’ since NAFTA.
Ford Motor Co. says it plans to move its entire small-car operation to Mexico over the next two years, the type of below-the-belt punch to American workers that Donald Trump says he won’t allow to happen if he gets elected president.
Ford, meanwhile, assured its workers they would not lose their jobs because it will be expanding its large-car operations in Michigan, a familiar refrain that some aren’t buying, saying the larger trend is for auto-manufacturing to go north and south of the border – thanks to NAFTA and a new “free-trade” deal that’s brewing in Washington.
“This isn’t exactly new, but it is jarring news for many,” the Detroit Free Press reports. “Ford said in April it would spend $1.6 billion to build a new plant in Mexico and will build small cars in that plant and said last year it would end production of the Ford Focus and Ford C-Max in Wayne [Michigan] in 2018.”
Trump, the Republican nominee for president, immediately weighed in on the announcement, saying he would stop these types of off-shoring deals by ending 23 years of unfair trade agreements that sell off American jobs to Mexico and Canada.
“We’re gonna charge them a 35 percent tax, and you know what’s gonna happen? They’re never gonna leave,” Trump told Fox News.
And it’s not just Ford.
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