jsheradin@kbin.socialtoNews@lemmy.world•For First Time in Two Decades, U.S. Buys More From Mexico Than China
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9 months agoAlthough I’m sure the headline is true, at least with my industry it’s a little misleading. All we did over the past few years was cut in Mexico as middle men.
There’s no cost effective domestic source of a particular raw material so it’s traditionally been purchased from China and turned into a product in the US. With various tariffs and labor costs it’s now cheaper to purchase the same raw material from China, turn it into components in Mexico (thus a Mexican product), and then do final assembly in the US. On paper we’re importing things from Mexico but the majority of the money still ends up in the same place.
I’m curious if that’s the case for other industries.
The authorities allege that he was doing it to obtain vaccine batch numbers needed for making fraud proof-of-vaccination documents.