Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard emphasized the success of the USMCA free trade pact and underscored Mexico’s economic commitment to North America during remarks at the 85th annual general meeting of the American Society of Mexico (AmSoc) on Wednesday.
In conversation with AmSoc president Larry Rubin in Mexico City, Ebrard asserted that the USMCA — which superseded NAFTA in 2020 and is up for review in 2026 — “has been a great success.”
“I had a meeting the other day with various countries of the world, with their ambassadors [to Mexico] and they told me, ‘We don’t understand why you, the United States, Canada and Mexico, don’t realize that the agreement you have is the envy of everyone,” he said.
“The free trade agreement signed in 2019, 2020, between that date and now, made trade and investment increase 37%,” Ebrard said.
“That’s the size of the economy of many countries. … It’s a history of phenomenal success,” he said.
Ebrard, foreign affairs minister during most of the six-year term of former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, recalled that the expectation when negotiations for a new North America trade agreement began during the first presidency of Donald Trump was that a “disaster” was awaiting Mexico, that the new pact would lead to the “destruction” of the Mexican economy.
He stressed that the anticipated disaster didn’t occur.
“We’re part of a history of phenomenal success that is in no one’s interest to jeopardize,” Ebrard said.
Trump has pledged to renegotiate the USMCA while some Canadian politicians have advocated a bilateral Canada-U.S. agreement that doesn’t include Mexico, rather than the current trilateral pact. For his part, Ebrard predicted that the USMCA will endure for years to come.
“We have an agreement for some time yet,” said the economy minister, who acknowledged that there will be points of difference between Mexico, the United States and Canada when the pact is reviewed but stressed that the USMCA is of vital importance to a huge number of companies that operate in North America.
Ebrard: Mexico is an ally of North America, not China
Ebrard dismissed claims that Mexico is cozying up to China and that its trade and investment relationship with the East Asian country will cause problems with the United States and Canada when the USMCA is reviewed.
“We don’t have any auto plant of a Chinese brand in Mexico,” he said before highlighting that BYD — the Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer that has announced plans to open a factory in Mexico — has a plant (where electric buses are made) in California.
“We’re allied with, we’re part of the North American region,” said Ebrard, who also highlighted — not for the first time — that most Chinese investment in the region is in the United States.
He described claims that “Mexico is allied with China” as “half schizophrenic” and asserted that he doesn’t see any “strategic” economic “difference” between the three North American trade partners.
The federal government has begun taking steps to reduce reliance on imports from China, and Ebrard said late last year that Mexico would “mobilize all legitimate interests in favor of North America” amid the ongoing China-U.S. trade war.
‘We have to maximize Mexico’s comparative advantages’
In later remarks, Ebrard said that the world is amid “a new paradigm that has two characteristics.”
The first, he said, is greater trade protectionism “by region” — even though Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on Mexican and Canadian exports — while the second is “increasing competition” between the United States and China, the world’s top two economies.
“We’re in the North American region and therefore what we have do is maximize the comparative advantages Mexico has” due to its location,” Ebrard said.
He stressed that Mexico will continue to be “very necessary” for the United States in an economic sense, and vice versa. The two countries are each other’s largest trade partners, with two-way trade worth over US $776 billion in the first 11 months of last year.
“I think we have a geo-strategic advantage in this new era and we’re going to work with the new [U.S. ] government so that is a reality,” Ebrard said.
5 key quotes from Economy Minister Ebrard
In his conversation with Rubin, and in subsequent remarks to the press, Ebrard spoke about a range of other issues, including Plan México, an ambitious federal government economic plan that seeks to seize the nearshoring opportunity while delivering prosperity and well-being for Mexicans across the country.
Here is a selection of remarks the economy minister made on Wednesday.
On Plan México:
“It’s the first time that we have a plan with a lot of verifiable objectives. … It tells you what we’re going to do in each sector [of the economy] and each region. … What is the central issue? Among other [goals], increase national content [in the products] we make and reduce our dependence on Asian countries in general.”
On economic development in the south of Mexico:
“In Mexico now there are around 100 industrial parks [under construction]. … The vast majority are in the north of the country, in second place in central Mexico and there are very few in the south. What we have to do is take gas, energy, power plants [to the south] — we’re already doing it — so that the south integrates [more in the national economy]. It can’t grow if it doesn’t have energy, right? That was the limiting factor.”
On Mexico’s approach to dealing with the new US government:
“President Sheinbaum said it. We’re going to act with cold blood, calmness, cold blood, temperance. We’re going to seek points of agreement, we’re going to establish dialogue. There will be cooperation because there are no substantial differences between Mexico and the United States.”
On Nestlé’s US $1 billion investment in Mexico:
“Yesterday the CEO of Nestlé told me that Mexico produces all the Nescafé that is distributed in 70 countries around the world. … In other words, in Australia, now, someone is drinking a coffee that was made in Mexico. … Starting this year, Mexico will be the largest producer of coffee for the company Nestlé. … There are thousands of families that produce coffee, in Oaxaca, in Veracruz and in Chiapas.”
On foreign companies in Mexico:
“No one is going to leave Mexico because they have their most productive plants here. [Relocating] would be very expensive.”
By Mexico News Daily chief staff writer Peter Davies ([email protected])
