My point is: Mike the world is much more integrated than your little outdated view of it tells you and this flow of parts around the world has been going on for a long time.
-When the big 2.5 buy parts from Delphi it is very likely they are imported. Delphi import most of their parts. As of the Chapter 11 filing last April Delphi employed 32,000 UAW and other union workers in the USA plus 115,000-worker foreign factories, many of which operate in low-wage countries such as Mexico and China.
-Toyota builds engines in the USA, but Chrysler imports the 2.7L V6 from Mexico.
-In 1980 I removed a damaged wheel rim from my Chrysler Horizon and noticed it was made in Mexico. That was the Chrysler car using a VW engine made in Germany.
-Last summer I replaced the blower resistor in my wife's Sebring. The old resistor was made in Mexico, the replacement in Slovenia.
-Car carrying ships returning to Asia return with NA parts. Here we have a major Al wheel factory. They ship wheels to Japan and Korea on the returning car carrying ships.
You need to read more and become up to date:
Vehicles produced by companies other than the North American Big 3 currently account for about 44% of North American sales. However, many of the major foreign automobile companies now provide the bulk of their North American sales from their production facilities on this continent. As a result, imports account for only 20% of sales of light vehicles in the United States and just under 25% in Canada.
U.S. imports of motor vehicle parts are quite diversified with about 50% coming from overseas markets. At the end of the 1990s, Mexico surpassed Canada as a supplier of parts to the U.S. market. U.S. parts imports from China have just recently become important, and they are growing rapidly. U.S. imports of car parts from Japan have been flat, while the purchases of U.S.-made parts by the Japanese ³transplants² has soared, reflecting the fact that Japanese suppliers followed the Japanese assemblers in setting up operations in North America. Canada imports parts almost exclusively from the United States, although one should recognize that some of these parts may be originating overseas, but are landing first in the U.S. before being shipped to Canada.