LETTERS: Threats to democracy, Thoughts on nearshoring

Threats to democracy

Beware of border wall promises from the left; it could be a sinkhole. Remember they always have ulterior motives designed for future globalist expansion and personal gain, never for America.

On another subject, Saint Hillary is trying to deprogram MAGAs. Whom is she kidding? She’s gone into amnesia mode. She has erased the secretive shenanigans during the selling out of USA’s valuable uranium from her declining memory.

Last, but not least, the only viable threat to our democracy is neo-communism, fascism, Marxism and forced secretive transgenderism in our schools.

Imelda Coronado

Mission

Thoughts on nearshoring

A term increasingly encountered in the news, “nearshoring,” refers to a complex part of U.S.-Mexico trade that has the potential to bring about significant economic development in Mexico and the Rio Grande border cities. The term is a play on “offshoring,” a trend since the 1980s involving American and European companies setting up assembly plants in China and other places, to take advantage of supply chain efficiencies and lower wages.

However, a reversal is underway because of recent trans-Pacific supply chain disruptions and geopolitical tensions with China. This has motivated producers of goods destined for the U.S. market to seek alternative locations for manufacturing amid a preference for regional trade, including nearshoring, which, as the name implies, is the relocation of manufacturing from East Asia to nearby locations such as Mexico.

But is nearshoring already occurring at a significant level? The question is probably best answered by saying that its potential has yet to be realized, but the potential certainly exists and the process has begun.

Brownsville will likely see an uptick in freight and logistics from nearshoring. The manufacturing and logistics sectors of Tamaulipas point to federal data that show increases in investment in manufacturing along the border, categorized as nearshoring, especially in Reynosa and secondarily in Matamoros. Over the past year, according to the state’s economic development secretary, 51 companies, primarily automotive parts manufacturers, have announced plans to invest either in building new plants or expanding existing ones, totaling some $5 billion.

In this May 18, 2021, file photo, the Port of Brownsville can be seen from Texas State Highway 48. (Miguel Roberts/The Brownsville Herald)

The recent acquisition by Canadian Pacific Railroad of Kansas City Southern means that the merger, CPKC, offers continuous rail service between the Pacific port of Lázaro Cárdenas and Canada’s industrial heartland.

In my book, Geographical Scale and Economic Development: Lessons Learned from Texas and Mexico (Springer 2023), I describe Mexican interior “dry” ports located in Monterrey and San Luís Potosí, which enable CPKC to more efficiently transfer shipping containers between rail and truck. CPKC serves Brownsville, Reynosa and Matamoros, thus providing the Port of Brownsville a potential new source of freight and revenues.

In the book I discuss the shipment in containers of appliances from Monterrey to Tampa through the Port of Brownsville. As nearshoring brings more manufacturing to Mexico, Brownsville and its port will likely be seen as attractive to some shippers desiring to avoid Laredo’s trucking and rail bottlenecks.

Michael S. Yoder, Ph.D.

Laredo

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