Adios NAFTA

Possible scenario:

NAFTA is canceled and a 35% tariff is imposed on imported autos, among other products. Who will pay the manufacturing cost increases or the tariff costs that would be the result of such an action. The U.S. consumer, the U.S. worker or the U.S. investor. Who will bear the costs associated with a restart of illegal emigration resulting from a Mexican economic collapse.

Re: “Mexican labor rates, which averaged about $5.50 an hour in 2014, are about a fifth of the wages auto workers earn in the United States, according to the Center for Automotive Research (CAR).

Sean McAlinden, chief economist at CAR, said GM's Orion Township assembly plant in Michigan, which builds Chevrolet and Buick subcompacts, has the lowest labor costs of any U.S. plant thanks to a favorable agreement with the UAW negotiated as part of the U.S. government's bailout of GM in 2009. And yet the Ford Fiesta plant in Cuautitlan, near Mexico City, has a $700 labor cost advantage per car over GM's Orion plant, he said.