US urges Mexico to reopen border factories

Mexican health officials warn premature restart could lead to widespread deaths

Even as COVID-19 deaths mount at factories in Mexico, the United States is sending a clear message: It’s time for those that have stopped production to get back to work.

The U.S. government has mounted a campaign to persuade Mexico to reopen many factories closed because of the country’s social distancing guidelines, warning the supply chain of the North American freetrade zone could be permanently crippled otherwise.

“The destruction of the economy is also a health threat,” the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Christopher Landau, tweeted last week. “There are risks everywhere, but we don’t all stay at home for fear we are going to get in a car accident.”

Pressure has also come from American CEOs, more than 300 of whom sent a letter to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador saying they were “deeply concerned” about the shuttering of factories, and from the U.S. Department of Defense, which has asked Mexico to reopen plants that produce parts sold to defense contractors.

Mexican officials have begun to cave, despite warnings from health authorities here that reopening factories too soon could lead to widespread deaths. Federal officials have agreed to allow automotive plants to reopen. And authorities in the border state of Baja California have lifted closure orders on about a dozen factories. Dozens of other plants that were supposed to close but never did have escaped severe sanctions from labor officials.

The debate underscores the increasingly global nature of modern manufacturing as well as the different approaches governments have taken toward the economy in the face of the global pandemic.

So-called nonessential businesses have been ordered closed both in Mexico and in the U.S., but Mexico has embraced a more restrictive set of criteria.

That has left some factories still churning in the U.S. without crucial components because the plants that make them in Mexico have been forced to close.

Paola Avila, vice president of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, said 380 of the businesses her organization represents have petitioned Mexican officials to deem the work of their suppliers in Mexico essential so that they can resume business. About a dozen of those factories, most of which provide parts that are exported to the U.S. for use in manufacturing medical supplies, have been allowed to reopen.

The push has sparked anger in Mexico, especially in large foreign-owned factories along the northern border.