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News Wire: BNSF chairman calls on the US to remain in NAFTA

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Posted by Brian Schmidt on Thursday, December 7, 2017 8:43 AM

FORT WORTH, Texas — BNSF Railway’s Executive Chairman Matt Rose published an op-ed in the San Antonio (Texas) Express-News arguing that the United States should not withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement. Leaving would hav...

http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2017/12/06-bnsf-on-nafta

Brian Schmidt, Editor, Classic Trains magazine

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Posted by Convicted One on Thursday, December 7, 2017 7:01 PM

Well, I guess that's one way to avoid having to price short-haul freight. Keep the manufacturing jobs thousands of miles away "where they belong". Whistling

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Posted by MikeF90 on Friday, December 8, 2017 8:12 PM

Changes to NAFTA will have minimal effect on 'repatriating' jobs. Any new plant in the US will be even more automated. C'mon bubbas, them new manufacturing jobs will be very few and far between.

An example of how far the new MBAholes will go to pinch pennies - the current IV bag shortage is due to concentrating almost all production in Puerto Rico. Gee, what could go wrong?  Must not have learned anything from the Thailand hard drive production fiasco.  

Risk management in B-schools and corporations appears to be Dead.

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Posted by oltmannd on Friday, December 8, 2017 9:00 PM

MikeF90
Changes to NAFTA will have minimal effect on 'repatriating' jobs.

Completely agree.  Any jobs that come back will be highly automated and low wage. Main effect of scrapping NAFTA will be much more expensive automobiles.

-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/

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Posted by Convicted One on Sunday, December 10, 2017 3:28 PM

oltmannd
Any jobs that come back will be highly automated and low wage.

 

While that might be true for end product assembly, there will be a huge swath of "supply and support" industry that will surely be labor intensive.

 

And let's not forget, someone has to maintain those robots.

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Posted by jeffhergert on Sunday, December 10, 2017 4:56 PM

I read (I believe it was in Railway Age) an article some years back about the US railroads that had taken stakes in Mexican railroads.  One un-named railroad official said it was a positive experience.  He said the companies they deal with in Mexico were mostly the same ones they deal with in the US.  They could charge these companies freight rates equal to US rates, but pay wages at Mexican rates.

Jeff  

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