How Free Trade Agreements Crippled Detroit

[Viva_La_Revolution]

http://economyincrisis.org/content/how-free-trade-agreements-crippled-detroit

Upon visiting Detroit today it can be difficult to imagine it was once the wealthiest city in America. Once the fourth largest city in the country, with a population of two million, Detroit is now nothing more than the poster-child for America’s deteriorating economy. Its streets are lined with vacant houses and rows upon rows of dilapidated structures: old apartments and long-abandoned factories and warehouses. In fact, about a third of all Detroit has now been abandoned, and the population of two million has plummeted to a mere 714,000.

Detroit’s alarming decline can be attributed to the crippling effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the flood of foreign-made cars into the United States. Under NAFTA, manufacturing in America has all but been eliminated. In order to compete, Detroit’s automotive companies were forced to lower costs by outsourcing their operations to Mexico. Essentially, NAFTA made manufacturing cars in the U.S. too expensive. As a result, Detroit factories closed down and jobs were lost. The hard-won wealth of Detroit disappeared to make room for “free trade.”

[Nye Bevan]

1. Why are so many Hondas built in the US if it's "too expensive" to make cars here?

For the American market, a large number of models are produced in the East Liberty, Ohio and Lincoln, Alabama facilities. Models produced at the Ohio location include the Civic sedan and coupe (including GX trims, as well as the Element lines). The Alabama Honda factory handles production of the Honda Odyssey, Pilot and Ridgeline models in addition to the production of the US market V-6 engines. The Honda Accord is the exception to the American produced Honda line, with the Coupe and Sedan models built solely at Honda's Marysville, Ohio facility.

The Honda CR-V is unique among the Honda models, in that it is produced in three locations for the American market. While the East Liberty, Ohio facility produces as many as 400 CR-Vs a day, due to its popularity, models built in El Salto, Jalisco, Mexico as well as Sayama, Saitama, Japan may be imported to meet demand.

http://m.carsdirect.com/car-buying/where-are-honda-cars-built

[safeinOhio]

2. Detroit will make a come back some day.

It has Location, water, energy, transportation and workers.

[Hoyt]

3. American autos' decline began when the first foreign cars landed here, long before NAFTA.

People liked them better than the gas guzzling, slow handling, heavy, expensive junk made here. I think Japanese, Korean, and European cars are responsible because they were the consumers' choice, not Mexican and Canadian cars.

[Baobab]

5. Planned obsolescence

according to my friend the ad industry art director

[Nitram]

4. Detroit wasn't crippled by free trade. Detroit was crippled by manufacturing inferior vehicles.

As for jobs, every major foreign car manufacturer now has factories in the U.S.

[bhikkhu]

6. US auto industry employment has been fairly stable since '79

what has happened is a lot of it has moved to places other than Michigan. There has been growth in other countries, and we might have had growth in the US rather than stability without NAFTA, but that growth may not have happened in Michigan regardless.

Why did the auto industry leave Detroit for other states? I don't actually know, but it doesn't seem to have much to do with trade agreements.

Also see http://www.autoalliance.org/files/dmfile/2015-Auto-Industry-Jobs-Report.pdf for more information