"Security" At The Cost Of Free Trade

To its horror, the business-linked research organization found that companies in both Canada and the U.S. are reverting to pre-free trade practices in order to avoid hassles at the border. So far, this hasn't affected the volume of Canadian exports. But it has made Canada-U.S. trade more difficult and expensive. This is not trivial. The key to free trade is integrated production. A valve, for instance, might be built in Mexico and trucked to an Ontario firm that makes carburetors. The carburetor is then shipped to an Ohio plant that builds engines for a car that is assembled in Windsor and trucked to Florida for sale. By the time the car leaves its Miami showroom, the original Mexican valve will have made five international border crossings. It is a complex system that requires fleets of trucks moving among all three countries to make deliveries at precise times. In the jargon of business, this is known as just-in-time delivery. If the truck delivering fuel injectors is late, the engine plant shuts down. Yet if the truck arrives too early, the engine plant has to store these fuel injectors somewhere, which costs it money. http://www.thestar.com/News/article/226271 [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on June 18, 2007]

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