This is ironic, mexico getting burned by China too

[ringmastery]

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/7424064.htm

Increasingly, China is eating Latin America's lunch. Low-cost Chinese goods -- textiles, shoes, toys and electronics -- are flooding Latin American markets and pushing many Latin American exports out of the U.S. and European markets.

Last year, Mexico alone lost more than 250,000 jobs in the maquiladora assembly industry along the Mexican-U.S. border, in what economists say is largely a result of Chinese competition. Now, other countries stretching from Central America to Argentina are feeling the pinch. Central American apparel producers, Brazilian leather good exporters and Colombian wire makers are rapidly losing business to China's 72-cent-an-hour wages, a bargain when considering Latin America's average $2.30 hourly factory wage.

[mrgorth]

1. Not so much ironic

as sad. You wonder if we could make this hemisphere a better place by giving more business to Mexico and CA as opposed to China.

[TexasMexican]

4. those are my thoughts aswell.

I would much rather our money go to the economies of the Americas than to China.

Now, and more so in the future, the US will have alot more in common with the other American nations than it does with China. We should be doing more to help improve our situations than to improve the situation in China.

Additionally with China having a good economy they are obviously going to improve thier military, and we obviously will continue to see them as more and more of a threat to us.

[kalian]

2. This is the future....

wages and salaries will be constantly traversing the globe looking
for the cheapest labor. Corporations don't care, they have no
loyalties towards their fellow countrymen...just their share holders
and the bottomline.
That is the inherit evil of corporations.

I believe though...and unfortunately, that there will be another
world war before the economic situation becomes dire.

[camero]

3. Governments don't care either

Especially not ours. While it would be foolish to pass another Smoot Tariff Act, igniting trade wars around the globe like then, the governments can TAX multinationals at a higher rate than purely domestic ones.

And for those of you who say the cost would be passed to consumers, I say exactly. It would essentially steer consumers to products that are manufactured domesticly and take the advantage of lower labor costs away from foriegn suppliers.

We would basicly be telling them, you make your dough here, you have an obligation to the workers here.

[dpibel]

5. Who's burning whom?

I don't really direct this at the original poster, because this formulation is pretty standard in American discourse.

It's much better for the malefactors of great wealth if everyone thinks in these vague, nationalistic terms: it's China v. Mexico v. the virtuous USA.

But those maquiladora jobs never belonged to Mexico. Virtually all of those jobs were created by multinational corporations moving operations across the border purely for the sake of lower wages. That's not a case of Mexico whuppin' up on the US. That's a matter of corporations screwing both sides of the border: the jobs are lost in the US; nothing better than maquiladora is created in Mexico. (If you think working in the maquiladoras is a big step up for them Mexicans, check out some of the stories about real life there).

Similarly, when those same jobs move to China, the biggest beneficiaries are the corporations that own the factories and make the profits. Again, even in China, 72 cents/hour is not making people rich.

There is, at least theoretically, some benefit to the the countries, in the form of some change in economic activity/tax base.

But if you consider Mexico to be, at base, the people who live there, and China to be the people who live there, they're not smokin' anybody. Their getting fried by the big corps.

[amazona]

6. i saw this in the nation a few months ago, maybe a year ago

It's a disgrace. Mexicans who were just starting to improve themselves have been knocked back again.

China intends to undercut not just the U.S. worker but all workers in the Americas. I think we should figure out a way to have an American Union similar to the European Union and figure out a way to keep China from picking us off one by one and casting us into poverty or back into poverty, as the case may be. There needs to be a worldwide minimum wage and if China won't participate, then we should not trade with them. That's my gut feeling on the matter, anyway.