Big Chihuahua

Northwest Arkansas recently got a nasty wakeup call: By the end of next year, as many as 750 local jobs will have vanished. No matter how you slice it, that’s a lot of people out of work.

Still, if you look at the nuts and bolts of what just happened, it’s kind of scary.

News that Apex Tool Group will consolidate and move 250 Springdale jobs to its plant in Sumter, South Carolina, is one thing. Workers will have over a year to find new jobs, and if they want to move to the Palmetto State, they’re more than welcome.

But more telling is what happened with Superior Industries International. Those 500 jobs in Rogers are gone by the end of the year, shifted to other Superior facilities in Fayetteville but most to Mexico in the northern state of Chihuahua.

And if you’re thinking of a yappy little lap dog, a blistering desert or the mean streets of Ciudad Juarez, think again.

Chihuahua, home to 3.5 million people, is a manufacturing colossus with a dense, powerful cluster of import-export factories, known as Maquiladoras, along the U.S.-Mexico border. And with wages rising in China, places like Chihuahua are again attractive to companies like Superior. When Chihuahua, or for that matter, Baja, beckons with its index finger, there’s nothing Northwest Arkansas can do about it.