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Advanced Manufacturing and Mexico: A New International Division of Labor?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

Harley Shaiken
Harley Shaiken*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Much of the intense debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has focused on the number and kinds of jobs that Mexico could gain and the United States could lose as a result of more extensive economic integration (Faux and Lee 1992; Hufbauer and Schott 1993; Lustig, Bosworth, and Lawrence 1992; Weintraub 1993). This debate has raised the related issue of the nature of Mexico's industrial capability, a topic that predates NAFTA and will remain central regardless of the final outcome of the treaty. This article will explore that capability by focusing on a key question: Is Mexico a potential site for high-tech production or does its comparative advantage lie in labor-intensive low-tech operations?

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , 1994 , pp. 39 - 71
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

Research for this article was supported by a contract from the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment as part of the U.S.-Mexico, Technology, Trade, and Investment Project.

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