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“Yes, I think there’s opportunity for us — how can we fit into President Trump’s agenda?” said Matt Marchand, president and CEO of Windsor-Essex Regional Chamber of Commerce. The answer, he said, is to show the new administration how intertwined the Great Lakes economies are and how mutually beneficial it can be to maintain and grow that relationship.

Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP/Getty Images

Trump hosted a breakfast meeting Tuesday with the heads of General Motors, Ford Motor Co., and Fiat Chrysler

Automobiles. He’s given them 30 days to report back on ideas of how to boost American manufacturing. Prior to the meeting, Trump demanded on Twitter that automakers build new factories in the U.S.

“I want new plants to be built here for cars sold here,” his tweet said. He has warned of a “substantial border tax” on companies that move manufacturing out of the country and promised tax advantages to those that produce domestically.

For more than two decades, Mexico has been an oasis for the auto industry, offering cheap labour and access to dozens of markets through free-trade deals. Whitman says Detroit automakers can’t build small cars profitably in the U.S., where a unionized auto worker can make $58 an hour in wages and benefits. By comparison, a Mexican auto assembly worker makes a little more than $8.

That helps to explain why automakers have announced $24 billion in Mexican investments over the last six years, according to the Center for Automotive Research, a Michigan think-tank. In all, $50.5 billion in vehicles and $51 billion in auto parts were shipped to the U.S. from Mexico in 2015, U.S. government data show.