 The city's proximity to Southern California and its large, skilled, diverse, and relatively inexpensive workforce make it an attractive city for foreign companies looking to establish extensive industrial parks composed of assembly plants that are called "maquiladoras", even more so than other cities in the US-Mexican border zone, taking advantage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to export products.At its peak, in 2001 Tijuana had roughly 820 of these 'maquiladoras'.Foreign and domestic companies employ thousands of employees in these plants, usually in assembly-related labor.