Caught between tariffs and China, Mexico adapts to an unpredictable US

Time of India

2 days ago

MONTERREY: The factory in northern Mexico was built to supply Americans. Just a few hours from Texas, about 80% of its air conditioners and refrigeration units are sent to the United States.
President Donald Trump's tariffs threatened to upend its whole business -- at least until the company devised a plan.
Before the tariffs took effect in March, only about 40% of its exports traded under the rules of a pact Trump signed in his first term. But when Trump agreed to suspend tariffs on any Mexican goods that fell under the agreement, the company's leaders saw ways to adapt.
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They sought out Mexican suppliers for products bound for the United States. They analysed which products already complied with the pact's rules but had not yet been certified as such. And they reconsidered projects that involved bringing in imports from outside North America.
"When you're on a plane and there's turbulence, you get really scared and you hold onto your seat," said Xavier Casas, who oversees the factory for the company Danfoss, in the Mexican city of Apodaca. "But, you know, 99% of the time, the plane is going to land."
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Today, virtually all Danfoss products shipped from Mexico to the United States comply with the trade deal, called the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA. Efforts are underway, Casas said, to make some components in Apodaca, where the Danfoss factory is, instead of in China -- another way to mitigate the impact of punishing U.S. tariffs.
"Until now, Mexico's trade strategy was still closely tied to Asia. Bringing in supplies from there was financially viable because of the low costs: Instead of thinking how to manufacture things here, I'd import them," Casas said. "But the current situation is pushing us to think, 'Hey, why not?'"
While the United States and China have recently announced steps to defuse an all-out trade war, experts say it is unclear whether the truce, which is not yet final, will crumble or hold. Although exact details are unknown, the deal could mean some tariffs on Chinese products are lower and others significantly higher.
Analysts also think it is unlikely that U.S. tariffs will return to their 2024 levels as long as Trump is in office -- and possibly even well beyond his term.
Countries and companies around Latin America have faced a similar problem, caught between Asia's cheap supply lines and the lucrative market of the United States. Brazil and Colombia, countries with two of the region's biggest economies, are among those that have moved closer to China since Trump's second term began.
But many Mexican companies have rushed to align with the United States, despite the pain of moving away from China, which sells 11 times as much to Mexico as it buys. Some executives even see the tariffs as an incentive to reduce their dependence on China and other Asian suppliers, which could strengthen manufacturing in North America overall.
"The game has changed," said Ryan Last, a lawyer with Troutman Pepper Locke, an international law firm helping manufacturers understand and react to U.S. tariffs. "There's this long-term adaptation where companies are thinking of investing in the U.S. or shifting their supply chain to more domestic North American content."
Two top officials at the Mexican Economy Ministry, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to endanger trade negotiations with the United States, said more exporters wanted to show that their products were mostly manufactured in North America, with materials mostly sourced from the region.
Data shared by the ministry show that about 87% of Mexican exports are now free of U.S. tariffs -- only a slight decrease compared with last year. (Even products that may comply with the trade deal, such as cars or steel, have been hit by some of Trump's tariffs.)
"I was expecting all these numbers to plummet because of the uncertainty," said Aristeo López, an international trade expert and former Mexican diplomat who acted as lead negotiator for parts of the USMCA deal. "But," he added, "there's not been such a negative impact on Mexican exports."
Víctor Gamas, a customs broker for an agency that works on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, said many of his customers were retooling their supply chains.
This year, Gamas said, he visited an American manufacturer of acrylic products at that company's plant in Nogales, northern Mexico. The company was racing to substitute imports from Vietnam and China for supplies made in Mexico, he noted.
Trump's on-again, off-again tariffs have persuaded some exporters to take preemptive measures.
A director of manufacturing at an American factory in Monterrey said that his team had stopped buying a key electronic component from a Mexico-based Chinese company, just in case the United States started targeting Chinese suppliers in the region.
Trump, said the director, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to comment publicly about his company's practices, had forced businesses to think differently -- and to act against even hypothetical risks.
Mexico's president,
Claudia Sheinbaum
, has encouraged such changes. She has pushed what she calls
Plan Mexico
: an ambitious, long-term strategy meant to revitalise manufacturing; substitute imports; and balance the trade deficit with countries that do not have trade deals with Mexico, including China.
Because many Chinese goods sold to Mexico are reworked for sale onward to the United States, the mismatch in the trade balance between China and Mexico had created little political tension in Mexico until recently. But with Trump's ascent, China has loomed over more trade issues.
"With China, we have relations on many issues -- and obviously, with the United States, we have the trade agreement, which is very important," Sheinbaum said Wednesday.
In January, days before Trump returned to the White House, Sheinbaum said that strengthening the USMCA was "the only way" the region could "compete with Asian countries, particularly China."
If North America could manufacture 10% of the imports it otherwise receives from China, Sheinbaum's finance minister said at the time, the gross domestic product of Mexico would grow by 1.2%, that of the United States by 0.8% and Canada's by 0.2%.
The border state of Nuevo León, where about 4,500 foreign companies have factories and offices, has tried to seize the moment. Monterrey, its capital, has for years advertised to investors as an alternative to China.
"I don't want a company to come and bring everything with it," said Emmanuel Loo, Nuevo León's acting economy secretary, whose team has been helping manufacturers find local suppliers. "No, I want a company to come and buy everything locally."
Manuel Montoya, the director of the Nuevo León automotive cluster, a group that includes about 120 vehicle manufacturers, said that Mexico would still need to source many materials, particularly electronic goods, from China. But he said even that could change in the following years if local providers found ways to make them.
"What's the strategy that our companies have been following? Try to be North American," Montoya said. "If you still have something that you bring from Asia, forget about it already."