Mexico’s exports to the United States during the first half of 2025 reached US $264.38 billion, a 6.3% increase over the same period last year, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Tuesday.
However, Mexico’s share of the U.S. market fell from 15.9% in the first six months of 2024 to 15% from January through June 2025 as U.S. imports rose at the global level.
Mexican exports to the U.S. climbed despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to introduce new 30% tariffs on non-free-trade agreement (USMCA) goods — a plan that has been put on hold for 90 days following a month of negotiations with Mexican President Sheinbaum’s cabinet.
Meanwhile, Mexico’s imports of U.S. products rose by a significantly lower rate of 1.1% year-on-year in the first half of 2025, totaling $168.17 billion.
The differential in Mexican exports and imports caused Mexico’s trade surplus with the United States to increase by 16.7% to $96.21 billion, edging closer to that of China, which fell 12.4% year-over-year, to $111.48 billion. That surplus has been one of Trump’s pretexts for his aggressive trade stance toward Mexico.
One of the takeaways from the recent trade negotiations between the United States and Mexico was President Sheinbaum’s appearance of abidance to Trump as regards the trade surplus, even to the point of Mexico encouraging its nation’s companies to “buy American.”
In recent months, Trump has imposed 50% tariffs on steel, aluminum and copper imports and 25% on automobiles and certain auto parts from Mexico. He also introduced 25% tariffs on non-USMCA products, which could increase to 30% unless Sheinbaum can convince the U.S. president not to raise the tariffs by the October deadline.
Overall, U.S. export and import levels both increased in the first half of the year, despite the imposition of tariffs on several countries, which encouraged many states to introduce reciprocal tariffs. U.S. global foreign purchases climbed by 12.7% to almost $1.8 trillion. Conversely, exports increased by 5% to reach $1.08 trillion.
Even with its reduced market share, Mexico remained the U.S.’s largest trading partner in the first half of 2025, followed by Canada (13%) and China (7.9%).
With reports from El Economista
