The value of purchases of goods and services by Mexico from China soared 86 percent in the past decade, official data reveals. Although this dynamism is much higher than the 25 percent growth shown by imports from the United States in the same period, there are still challenges ahead, especially in exports, experts agreed.
According to data from the Bank of Mexico, between January and August 2021 Mexico bought merchandise from the Asian giant for 61 thousand 724 million dollars, an amount higher than the 31 thousand 175 million dollars registered in the same period of 2011, that is, 10 years ago. In the same period, Mexico’s purchases from the United States went from 114 thousand 877 million dollars to 144 thousand 427 million dollars.
Although the United States continues to be the country that buys the most from Mexico, in the recent decade it has lost weight. Historical figures from the central bank show that in 2011, 50 percent of Mexican imports came from the United States; however, by August 2021 they already only represented 45 percent.
This gap has been exploited by China. A decade ago, Mexico’s purchases from that country were equivalent to 14 percent of its total imports, while now they represent just over 19 percent.
For Enrique Dussel Peters, coordinator of the China-Mexico Studies Center, in the past decade, Mexico has made an effort to diversify its international trade to depend too much on the United States; Furthermore, since 2017 the United States and China have been in a trade war that has increased Mexico’s trade with both nations.
From the specialist’s point of view, Mexico must take advantage of the trade conflict between the two commercial giants to increase its exports to China, which, although they have grown in the past decade, are far from the level of imports.
In this regard, Carlos Bautista, a trade specialist from La Salle University, emphasized that Mexico should take advantage of the fact that China is the “world’s factory”, since it produces almost everything, but does not produce raw materials such as oil and other minerals. , so you have to import them, transform them, and then export them.
“Mexico exports many raw materials, from oil, minerals, agriculture, among other things, we have taken the opportunity to increase our sales to that country during the pandemic, but there is still great potential,” he said.
Both experts agreed that Mexico has a foreign policy in which it tries not to depend excessively on the United States, which leads to the search for new markets, in this case, the Chinese; however, it is necessary to work on a strategy that allows exploiting the commercial potential that exists between the two countries.
Source: jornada.com.mx
