REGIONS: Texan Envisions U.S., Mexico Starting a 'Productivity Zone'
MENTION THE ECONOMIC SUCCESS of Hong Kong, South Korea or Singapore, and most business executives shake their heads in envy. Gary Jacobs of Laredo, Texas, is different. He gets angry. "As an American living on the Mexican border, I don't feel I owe Asia a damn thing. Nothing. But I do feel I owe Mexico something," he says.</br></br>Mr. Jacobs thinks it's time the U.S. and Mexico joined forces and started slugging for more of the high-quality, low-cost goods that have been flowing from Asian factories to consumers the world around. And he has a plan.</br></br>He envisions a "border productivity zone" on U.S. soil where companies could churn out products for the domestic and export markets using mostly Mexican labor and energy. An ideal site, he suggests, is his own impoverished city of Laredo (pop. about 99,000), which slumbers beside the Rio Grande, 140 miles south, but a high-tech world apart, from booming San Antonio. In the 1980 census, Laredo had the lowest per-capita income, $3,980, of any U.S. metropolitan area. The unemployment rate is now 21%. The city's population is 93% Mexican-American.</br></br>As it happens, Mr. Jacobs could also help investors line up financing for projects in the proposed manufacturing zone. He is president of Laredo National Bank, which, with assets of $825 million, is the largest bank in this desolate stretch of south Texas.</br></br>MR. JACOBS'S PLAN is a close cousin to a long-running U.S.-Mexican program known as the "twin plant," or maguila program. Since 1965, Mexico has allowed 100% foreign-owned companies to set up factories and import raw materials duty free, provided the finished products are reexported. At last count, some 130,000 Mexicans were working in about 600 "maguiladoras," most of them along the 1,800-mile border, producing everything from trousers to electronic toys and earning about $1 billion annually for Mexico's beleaguered treasury.