145
submitted 7 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

The United States bought more goods from Mexico than China in 2023 for the first time in 20 years, evidence of how much global trade patterns have shifted.

In the depths of the pandemic, as global supply chains buckled and the cost of shipping a container from China soared nearly twentyfold, Marco Villarreal spied an opportunity.

In 2021, Mr. Villarreal resigned as Caterpillar’s director general in Mexico and began nurturing ties with companies looking to shift manufacturing from China to Mexico. He found a client in Hisun, a Chinese producer of all-terrain vehicles, which hired Mr. Villarreal to establish a $152 million manufacturing site in Saltillo, an industrial hub in northern Mexico.

Mr. Villarreal said foreign companies, particularly those seeking to sell within North America, saw Mexico as a viable alternative to China for several reasons, including the simmering trade tensions between the United States and China.

“The stars are aligning for Mexico,” he said.

New data released on Wednesday showed that Mexico outpaced China for the first time in 20 years to become America’s top source of official imports — a significant shift that highlights how increased tensions between Washington and Beijing are altering trade flows.

The United States’ trade deficit with China narrowed significantly last year, with goods imports from the country dropping 20 percent to $427.2 billion, the data shows. American consumers and businesses turned to Mexico, Europe, South Korea, India, Canada and Vietnam for auto parts, shoes, toys and raw materials.

Non-paywall link

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] jsheradin@kbin.social 9 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Although I'm sure the headline is true, at least with my industry it's a little misleading. All we did over the past few years was cut in Mexico as middle men.

There's no cost effective domestic source of a particular raw material so it's traditionally been purchased from China and turned into a product in the US. With various tariffs and labor costs it's now cheaper to purchase the same raw material from China, turn it into components in Mexico (thus a Mexican product), and then do final assembly in the US. On paper we're importing things from Mexico but the majority of the money still ends up in the same place.

I'm curious if that's the case for other industries.

[-] 2fat4that@kbin.social -1 points 7 months ago

Taking the manufacturing away is the first step in both independence from China and pushing Mexico towards raw materials refinement by reinforcing the trades that depend on them.

If we can manage to starve China of certain manufacturing jobs the skills won’t be passed down and they’ll be back to making the simple, inferior products they’re known for in less than a generation.

[-] whoelectroplateuntil@sh.itjust.works 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Many of the companies doing this ARE Chinese and the goal is to effectively launder the production and make what amounts to a Chinese product seem Mexican by offloading some of the component assembly to Mexican facilities. This lets them sidestep US tarriffs that were imposed by Trump. The article addressed this.

this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024
145 points (98.0% liked)

News

22852 readers
3183 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS