Bìznes Inform (Sep 2015)
International Competitiveness of the Maquiladoras in the Context of NAFTA-Functioning: Experience for Ukraine
Abstract
The article is aimed at studying the emergence of the maquiladoras in Mexico, their evolution, characteristics and stages of development. The theoretical background of the maquiladoras is considered from the position of the product life cycle theory. As one of the preconditions for the emergence of the socalled «golden age» of the maquiladoras served a powerful devaluation of the Mexican peso in the mid 1990's. Along with this, a number of authors have noted the non-obviousness of economic successes in the whole economy of Mexico. The current stage is characterized by the transition of the maquiladoras from assembling and simple productions towards the producing innovative products and marketing their own brands. It is noted that among the investors in the maquiladoras, in contrary to the American TNCs, the number of companies from Southeast Asia and Europe is still growing. The author concludes that in the middle of the 1990's the maquiladoras were transformed from the special economic cross-border trade along with investments with the United States, which had a local character, into a classical free trade zone. The article contains an attempt to extrapolate the experience of the maquiladoras on interaction in the creation of a free trade zone with the US-market, against the background of the growing competition from Southeast Asian countries at the US-market, considering the current trade relations of Ukraine with the EU.
