Foreign refrigerator manufacturers who used subsidies to sell appliances in the U.S. below market rates have been hit by the U.S. Commerce Dept. with anti-dumping duties:
The United States on Monday ordered final duties on bottom-mount refrigerators from South Korea and Mexico in a case brought by U.S. manufacturer Whirlpool against foreign rivals, including LG and Samsung.
Whirlpool accused the Mexican and South Korean producers of selling the refrigerators, which have the freezer section on the bottom, in the U.S. market at unfairly low price.
The century-old Michigan-based manufacturer, in a petition filed last year with the U.S. Commerce Department, also said its South Korean competitors received government subsidies.
LG invested $12m in a new 283,000 sq. ft. refrigerator factory in Monterrey, Mexico
Ironically, it is Whirlpool who has been eliminating U.S. jobs and shifting production to Mexico:
[October's] announcement by Whirlpool that it's closing a plant in Arkansas and eliminating 5,000 jobs was eerily familiar news for the people of Evansville, Ind. Two years ago, the company shuttered its factory there and transferred production to Mexico.
It was one of many manufacturers who moved south of the border after the implementation of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, signed in 1993.
What's happened in Evansville since then is the subject of tonight's edition of "Need to Know."
While 13 million Americans remain unemployed, Mexico's rate has dropped below five percent:
Mexico's unemployment fell in January from the previous month and from a year earlier, the National Statistics Institute, or Inegi, said Friday.
Inegi said unemployment was 4.9% last month, down from 5.4% in January of 2011. In seasonally adjusted terms, the jobless rate fell 0.2 percentage point from December, Inegi said.
Steady economic growth in 2011 led to the creation of about 600,000 formal private sector jobs last year, and a similar number are expected to be created in 2012.