Mexico takes the US side in potential trade battles with China and seeks to boost local content

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s top economic official has suggested his country will actively take the U.S. side in looming trade battles with China.

“There is a dispute between China and the United States, stronger now than it was a few years ago,” Economy Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said at a business forum on Tuesday. “And we now have a plan for a route to follow.”

“What will be the main idea, the main design of that route?” Ebrard said. “To mobilize all legitimate interests in favor of North America.”

For example, he said it will be in Mexico’s own interest to welcome nearshoring, which tends to move production from plants in Asia to Mexico.

“Our second most important mission is to accelerate nearshoring, to take advantage of it one thousand percent,” Ebrard said.

He said Mexico’s domestic content in manufacturing exports is currently less than 20%, and that Mexican officials are looking at “how we can reduce all the imports we have, that is, to increase domestic content in any way we can.”

He said the government would be working with individual companies to get suppliers and parts producers to also move to Mexico.

“Our mission is not just to increase our market share, but to increase what is produced in Mexico,” Ebrard said. “By necessity, we have to work with each company, we have to dedicate funding, personnel, perseverance and follow-up, to get those numbers up.”

Mexico once largely exported oil to the United States, but now manufacturing exports of products like cars, trucks, machinery and appliances dwarf the oil trade.

In 2023, for the first time in more than two decades, Mexico displaced China as the leading supplier of imported products to the U.S. market.