Volvo to expand EX30 e-SUV production to Ghent plant

Actually, Chinese manufacturing labor wages are still incredibly low compared to Western automakers, and there are weaker rules regarding working hours, overtime, and vacation time. Their pay packages can be as low as 1/6th to 1/3rd of Western workers. Then of course there's the IP concerns, which up until Tesla, OEMs were required to form partnerships with Chinese companies to produce cars in China. Those cars were of course meant for the Chinese market, not for mass export to wealthier Western nations. Which is fine, they are after all the largest automotive market in the world, on account of their massive population. Cars being produced for the nation are produced in the nation, which is a good thing. I have no problem with companies building cars in low wage nations, so long as those cars are going to nations with a similar cost of living. And FYI, if a car is made in a foreign nation and imported that was previously build in the West for the Western population, then that will result in loss of jobs, a higher trade deficit, and more money circulating out of the lower/middle classes of the consumer nation and mostly up to the corporate execs and shareholders. Also known as a transfer of wealth and income from the many to the few on top. No wonder execs salary has soared so precipitously versus their average worker since we started this trend towards globalization! Cheap labor means more profits. More profits means more transfer of wealth and income inequality. You support that? No OEM has built cars in China and mass exported them to the West until Tesla. The US cracked down on it, but Europe certainly hasn't. Frankly, the West isn't so desperate for manufacturing workers as to justify this move. It's a greedy move, meant to pump corporate margins. That's it. You didn't even bother to consider the lackluster Chinese environmental regulations and enforcement in your response. The US largely reduced their use of coal over the last couple of decades... guess who didn't? With regards to Mexico, strangely enough I never defended using low wage Mexican labor to export cars to wealthier nations, including the US, in lieu of using Western labor. The same dynamic of causing a wealth transfer upwards from customer to corporation with limited means of pushing that revenue back down into the general economy through a well paid manufacturing labor force still applies. I will say this for Mexico over China though... the revised NAFTA agreement requires Mexican workers make a much higher minimum wage when working on cars being exported to the US. Which is in addition to the fact that they're our direct neighbor, and boosting their economy helps the US as well. Many of the vehicles currently being produced in Mexico are low price and margin vehicles, which has largely been accepted given that the US allowed lower wage nations (at the time at least) like Japan and Korea to start mass exporting cars to the US. That lead to a massive loss in market share for the big 3, which was likely a big reason for their bankruptcies / near bankruptcies in 2009. Tell me... how did that turn out for the US economy, eh? And you still want to defend mass imports from China? The irony is that since the early 2000s, Japanese and Korean companies have at least built up their manufacturing capacity in the US, likely due to the chicken tax and the trend by consumers towards larger SUVs.