For Mexican workers who assembled television sets for Zenith Electronics, the North American Free Trade Agreement was the beginning of a dream. For their counterparts making picture tubes in a Chicago suburb, it spelled the end of one.
Former Zenith Chairman Jerry K. Pearlman, interviewed by The Herald in 1993 at Zenith headquarters in Illinois, gained local union support for NAFTA based on the argument the pact would boost production at the Zenith plant in Melrose Park, Ill.
But Zenith is now a wholly owned subsidiary of LG Electronics, the Korean behemoth that helped drive the American company into a controversial 1999 bankruptcy. Pearlman sent word through a spokeswoman that he did not care to comment on NAFTA at age 10.
The Melrose Park picture tube plant, also visited by The Herald in 1993, was closed down as part of the prepackaged bankruptcy.
But at LG Electronics in Mexico (formerly owned by Zenith), one NAFTA prediction has come true. Mexico has become an export platform for Central and South America and Europe, in addition to the United States. Before NAFTA, the plant only sold in the U.S. market.
''NAFTA is a great success,'' said Javier Choi, marketing and sales director at the LG assembly plant in Reynosa. But Choi admits that although the plant may hit its target of nearly $300 million in sales, it faces tough times because of the global over-capacity of electronics plants. ''We are living in a globalized era,'' Choi said. ``It's really tough right now.''
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