We have already written about the effects of the U.S.-China trade war and the emergence of the nearshoring phenomenon. And also about how Mexico was benefiting from this process. Well, in July Mexico became the leading exporter of goods to the United States, with 15% of US imports coming from its southern neighbor. Imports from China that month accounted for 14.6%.

The close trade relationship between Mexico and the United States goes back a long way. As early as the 1960s, Mexico became a manufacturing economy with the implementation of the maquilas model -assembly plants for goods from largely imported parts- which took on a new and strong impetus in the 1990s with the Free Trade Agreement. -plants for assembling goods from parts, largely imported- which took on a new and strong impetus in the 1990s with the North American Free Trade Agreement (now T-MEC after its renegotiation under the Donald Trump administration).

Now came the turn of nearshoring, whose clearest sign of materialization is the increase in foreign direct investment flows that, by 2023, and not counting the megafactory that Tesla will build in Monterrey, had grown by 40% over the previous year. Meanwhile, industrial space in Monterrey has expanded by 30% since 2019 and vacancy in industrial parks nationwide has fallen to 2.1%.

The challenge for Mexico is to turn this new momentum into a growth trigger that will spread to the rest of the economy, according to Bloomberg. In the last 30 years, Mexico's economic growth has averaged only 2% annually. Will it make it this time?