Things are starting to turn nasty in trade circles and, as might be expected, one Donald Trump and his gang are almost certainly behind it all.
Smiths Medical is an Anglo-American Minneapolis-headquartered healthcare manufacturing company with a siginificant operation in Baja California, Mexico. Among other things, it produces medical ventilator machines for hospitals, which, obviously enough, are in high demand right now. The company is continuing to operate in Mexico, at a time when most industrial plants have been closed down in order to combat the ongoing pandemic, on the grounds that its output is considered an essential service.
But now the company is refusing to sell its ventilators to Mexican hospitals, where they are badly needed to treat coronavirus patients (and it's not hard to see where that directive came from - does "America First" ring a bell?) So, reasonably enough, Mexico is now saying that the company is no longer providing an essential service in Mexico, and so should be shut down in accordance with Mexican health energency contingency measures.
It's a tit-for-tat response, and it would be a shame to lose any capacity for producing the much-needed life-saving equipment. But you can absolutely see the Mexican point of view: poorly-paid Mexican workers are risking life and limb to produce essential equipment that promptly leaves Mexico to benefit other countries. Where's the value in that?
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