Many Mexicans who thought they had secure middle-class jobs in American-owned factories are discovering that those headlines about global layoffs often mean them.
Other investments have taken the form of new factories, where American workers are learning to become more productive and create higher-quality goods than in many American-owned factories.
American-owned factories in China previously operated under the threat that they could be blocked from sending products home if the United States ever withdrew China's normal trading status.
It was the first time that an American-owned factory has led either of Harbour's lists of the most efficient car and light-truck factories.
You can look across the Rio Grande river in Texas and see American-owned factories, deregulated and non-unionised, on the Mexican side.
Although how an Australian of such questionable background would end up working in an American-owned factory in Shanxi Province was a mystery, to say the least.
On the border, the labor leader Julia Quiñónez fought for the rights of workers in American-owned factories.
Border cities, thanks to the American-owned factories called maquiladoras, have Mexico's lowest unemployment rates and access to rare goods and services.
Early next year the Administration will let another panel arbitrate a dispute with Italy over an American-owned factory there.
This country's domestic car industry is made up of mostly American-owned factories.