[Alberta's Child]

That compares with $58 in the United States for General Motors and $38 at Volkswagen's factory in Tennessee, the lowest hourly cost in the country, according to the Center for Automotive Research, an industry think tank in Ann Arbor, Mich. German auto workers cost about $52 an hour.

Trade will never "work" for the U.S. under these conditions. If U.S. auto workers even cost more than superior German labor, then a company like GM or Ford should have been out of business by now.

It's worth noting that Ford and GM actually pay their workers comparably to the $38/hour listed here for the newest auto plant in the U.S. in Tennessee. The problem (for many) is that they can only afford to pay their U.S. workers $58/hour if they offset these high labor costs with a bunch of $8/hour workers in Mexico. This is exactly why Ford built that plant in Mexico in the first place.

[Lumper20]

Union greed and sad ass workers.

[Lumper20]

Union greed and sad ass workers.

[central_va]

So we can work with actual numbers the industry average labor costs per vehicle is 30 man-hours. So the labor per vehicle in the Mexican factory is $240 per vehicle. The US factory paying 58/hr the total labor bill is $1,160 per vehicle. Net saving is 1160 - 240 = $920 per vehicle.

We are not talking about astronomical savings for what we give up. I question whether the consumer sees any of that $920.