70,000 Alabama jobs said at risk if NAFTA talks crash

[yallerdawg]

Source: AL.com, by Lee Roop

President Trump has threatened to tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) now up for renewal, but north Alabama business leaders were warned Thursday that he may also tear up 70,000 Alabama jobs if he does.

Jobs. They are why Alabama citizens should care about the negotiations under way to renew the deal among the U.S., Canada and Mexico originally signed 24 years ago, the business leaders were told. When the deal was made to cut or end duties on most products and parts moving between the three countries, all three wanted it.

"Now, we have two countries that really want it and another one that's saying they probably don't want it," Mexican Consul General F. Javier Diaz told reporters afterward. "That's a very different thing."

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"A lot of people think that what we are trading with each other is finished goods," Diaz said. "Yes, we sell avocados and you sell bourbon. That's great."

But the real relationship is more complex, he said. "For example, every car that is done in North America, the cars are actually (made) partly in Mexico and partly in the United States. Out of every Mexican product that is exported to the world, 40 percent of that product is American content. If you compare that to China, the percentage of American content in a Chinese product is 2 percent."

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Read it all at: http://www.al.com/news/huntsville/index.ssf/2018/02/70000_alabama_jobs_said_at_ris.html