Should-Read: Thomas Black et al.: One Tiny Widget’s Dizzying Journey Shows Just How Critical Nafta Has Become

Should-Read: Thomas Black et al.: One Tiny Widget’s Dizzying Journey Shows Just How Critical Nafta Has Become: “Global trade involves a complex web of cross-border journeys, seamless and often invisible to American consumers…

…A single lowly capacitor, a pinkie tip-sized component that stores electrical energy…. We begin with a small Michigan company called Firstronic, which makes printed circuit boards for autoparts, such as automotive seat controls…. Firstronic… in Grand Rapids… buys the capacitor itself from… Centennial, Colorado… Arrow Electronics Inc., which imports the components from multiple suppliers in Asia. The capacitor is shipped to Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, where it is inserted into a circuit board. Then it heads to a U.S. warehouse just across the border…. The component then returns to Mexico, hauled to a Kongsberg Automotive factory in Matamoros. Kongsberg, a Norwegian company, assembles the circuit board into a seat actuator….

The control unit ships to… a Lear Corp. seat-manufacturing plant in Arlington, Texas…. Now traveling inside the finished seat, the capacitor is shipped a short distance to an auto assembly plant… the Ford Flex SUV at its factory in the Toronto suburb of Oakville…. The story of the little capacitor shows how intricately interconnected North American manufacturing operations have become…