Governor Samuel Garcia is a young man in a hurry between the birth of his daughter and the arrival of Tesla at his home in Monterrey, northern Mexico, fueled by those factories that now favor America over Asia.
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The first electric vehicles from the Mexican “gigamanufactory” could come as early as “next January,” the governor of Nuevo Leon told the AFP news agency a few hours before leaving for the maternity ward, based on his contacts with Tesla.
An uninhibited communicator, Mr. Garcia, 35, shared the video of the birth on Instagram with his wife, as of course he posted the photo from his meeting with Tesla CEO Elon Musk earlier in March at the company’s Austin, Texas headquarters.
Ten days after announcing a $5 billion investment, Tesla is already finalizing the land purchase outside of Monterrey.
“I think it’s a huge piece of land where they’re going to build the biggest factory in the world. As far as I know, it’s more than 1,600 hectares,” explains Mr. Garcia.
The youthful-looking governor is banking on 7,000 direct jobs in Monterrey, an industrial city (Whirlpool, Kia etc.) 135 miles from the Texas border and 400 miles from Austin.
It also relies on indirect jobs by the tens of thousands. “About 30 Tesla suppliers came through here from November to February.”
Taiwanese computer maker Quanta, which makes the “brains” of cars, arrived in December 2021 and has already hired 2,500 workers, according to an executive.
“It’s amazing,” adds this manager, who is happy to soon have his customers on site instead of in Austin.
French Saint-Gobain (windshields) also has a factory in the region, as will Faurecia (car seats) soon. France inaugurated a consulate general in Monterrey in 2021.
Civil society is dampening the euphoria gripping elites in Nuevo Leon, a developed country of 5.7 million people that was hit by a severe drought last year. Pollution smog regularly shrouds the mountains around Monterrey.
“The state must be able to react in record time” to the “demand for housing, water, mobility, health, schools,” fears the general director of the Consejo civico association, Sandrine Molinard.
Reinforced “Maquiladoras”
The “Tesla Effect” and the New World Order are being felt hundreds of miles north of Monterrey, along the border, as in Ciudad Juarez.
Ciudad Juarez is the cradle of the “maquiladoras,” those foreign factories that employ cheap Mexican labor to manufacture products to be re-exported to the United States (electronic or aerospace components, medical equipment, auto parts, etc.).
The trade war between the United States and China, Covid and stock market paralysis, the relocation of production lines to America and Joe Biden’s plans to support the economy have given around 300 factories in Juarez a second life, according to local stakeholders.
“It’s a boom,” sums up the general director of the municipal economic development agency Ivan Perez, who is concerned about the labor shortage. “We need 30,000 employees”.
New warehouses are springing up in the “industrial parks” built along the fences protecting El Paso, the American sister city so near and so far for Venezuelan migrants stranded in Juarez.
Four companies in Taiwan – including Apple contractor Foxconn and Tesla supplier Pegatron – are “building 70,000 m2” of new facilities, says industrial warehouse architect and developer Jorgez Bermudez, son of one of the pioneers of “maquiladoras” in the 1960s .
“In 20 years, I had never seen availability below 5% of the available space,” confirms Eduardo Cinco Cetina of Citius Business Real Estate Company.
This new “boom”, called “nearshoring” in Mexico, follows a simple principle: multinationals and their suppliers set up production lines close to their main customer, the North American market.
This “fashion” of “nearshoring” will not benefit Mexico’s industrial development, laments Jesus Manuel “Thor” Salayandia Lara, outgoing president of the local branch of the National Chamber of Manufacturing Industry (Cancintra).
“In 60 years of industry + maquiladoras + in Juarez and across the north of the country, there has never been any real transfer of technology,” he says. A debate as old as the maquiladoras.