Election near, Mexico-U.S. business partners praise trade ties
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but we all have to deal with certain realities," said Alicia Kerber, Mexico's consul general in Philadelphia.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but we all have to deal with certain realities," said
Alicia Kerber
,
Mexico's consul general in Philadelphia.
She spoke to businesspeople who jammed a trade discussion Thursday at the Duane Morris law firm. Kerber and business speakers stressed the realities of the U.S.-Mexico economic relationship - and America's place in the world - without directly mentioning the virulent pressure directed at it by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, or the trade skepticism echoed by his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.
NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement that unites the United States, Canada, and Mexico, has created a "deep-rooted economic integration" and "one of the best and most secure environments for business" in the world in those three countries, in competition with China, Europe, India, and other rivals, Kerber said.
Millions of jobs and competitive consumer and industrial prices in North America depend on open trade and investment, so let's keep the region "capable of seizing the economic opportunities of the future," Kerber urged.
Mexico's younger population is an asset for companies across the region, said Ken Smith Ramos, director of trade and NAFTA for Mexico's economic ministry.
"We are graduating more engineers per year than the United States," he said, and putting them to work in research and development and manufacturing centers in cities like Guadalajara (software), Monterrey (food, machinery), and aerospace (Queretaro), often in alliance with U.S. companies, he told the crowd.
City Councilman David Oh asked the Mexicans if they support the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal among the U.S., Japan, Australia, Mexico, Canada, and other U.S.-friendly countries that the Obama administration is backing - despite opposition from Trump and Clinton - as a way of uniting U.S. allies to compete with China.
If TPP fails, China is likely to "fill the vacant space," Smith Ramos warned. "Chile and Peru already have China as their number-one trading partner."
Mexico is Pennsylvania's second-largest national trading partner, after Canada, with about $4 billion worth of goods and services moving each way every year - and more expected with the opening of direct shipping service between Philadelphia and Veracruz on Mexico's Atlantic coast, said David Briel, head of Pennsylvania's international trade development office.
Some Mexican manufacturers are investing in the Northeastern U.S. In 2009, during the recession, Bimbo Bakeries saw its opportunity to expand from historically Spanish-speaking U.S. markets and bought up brands and plants, moving its U.S. headquarters to Horsham, said Martin Zapata, vice president of Bimbo Bakeries USA. (It also became name sponsor of the Philadelphia Union soccer team.) The company now counts 58 U.S. bakeries making Entenmann, Stroehmann, Sara Lee, Thomas' English Muffins, and other familiar brands, and employs 21,000 U.S. workers, of 138,000 worldwide.
"We strongly believe the opportunities are here," Zapata said. "We are hiring young heroes at our companies."
Tom Forkin of Camden-based Magnetic Metals offered a complementary vision: the U.S. company that fights falling world prices by expanding to Mexico.
A U.S. military supplier since World War II, Magnetic makes electronic parts. With plants in Camden and Anaheim, Calif., "we wanted a value-added proposition in Mexico," where labor and some other costs are cheaper, Forkin said.
Magnetic opened its first maquiladora (Mexican building and workers, U.S.-owned equipment) in 2009. The Mexican parts meet U.S. military specifications.
"We've hired hundreds of people who otherwise wouldn't have had the opportunity," and that's made it possible to keep Magnetic's U.S. operations growing, too, Forkin concluded.
215-854-5194 @PhillyJoeD