Mexico is not just the top supplier to the US. Now it is the top buyer.
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 4 hours ago
- 3 min read
By JAMES WAGNER
Mexico is now the world’s top buyer of U.S. goods, according to data released by the U.S. government Wednesday, outpacing Canada for the first time in nearly 30 years.
The data highlighted how Mexico and the United States have, despite periodic political tensions, become deeply intertwined in business, and how much global trade patterns have shifted in a short period. Only two years ago, Mexico became the country that sold the most goods to the United States, surpassing China.
“Mexico is the United States’ main trading partner,” said Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s economy minister, during the president’s daily news conference Wednesday.
The data, released by the U.S. Commerce Department on Wednesday, also showed how President Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs took a toll on overall trade in August, as taxes on exports from about 90 countries went into effect.
Canada had for decades been the biggest buyer of U.S. goods, but it has slowly lost ground to Mexico over the years, and it has had a far more combative economic relationship with Trump since his second term began. While the Trump administration has imposed steep tariffs on some exports from Canada, Trump has repeatedly carved out exemptions for Mexico after negotiations with its president, Claudia Sheinbaum, and her representatives.
From January to August, the new data showed, the U.S. exported $1.4 trillion worth of goods, with $225.6 billion heading to Canada and $226.4 billion to Mexico. (In 2024, the United States exported $349.4 billion to Canada and $334 billion to Mexico.)
“Today is the inflection point,” said Alfonso Muñoz, an economist at De la Calle Madrazo Mancera, an economic consulting firm in Mexico City. “There is a very high complementarity between the economies of Mexico and the United States.”
The trend was expected to hold as long as there were no major economic crises or interruptions to the current trade agreement among the United States, Mexico and Canada, Muñoz said.
Because of free-trade deals since 1994, the economies and supply chains of North America’s three giants have gradually become more interdependent. But over the decades, Canada’s share of U.S. exports has slowly decreased while Mexico’s has increased.
“The political weight, the importance that Mexico can have, is much greater than we think,” Muñoz said. “Even though there’s political noise or trade confrontation, Mexico continues to be the main supplier, and now it’s become the main buyer,” he added.
Mexico and the United States share what is considered the busiest land border in the world. As Mexico has grown, particularly its middle class, the country of over 130 million people has hungered for more U.S. goods, according to experts.
The sectors in which Mexico has purchased more U.S. goods over the years, according to his analysis, include meat; cereals like corn, for humans and animals; fuel, which has helped Mexico as it has struggled to refine its own crude oil; and iron and steel.
Tariffs have affected Mexico’s economy — it was expected to grow modestly at only 1% this year — but they have had less of an effect than first projected.
Reasons for that, experts say, include Mexico’s proximity, logistical infrastructure, labor costs and increasingly skilled workforce as significant factors.
Mexico’s leading exports to the United States are cars, machinery, electronics, medical devices, fruits and vegetables. So far this year, U.S. data show that its imports from Mexico have totaled $354.9 billion — up from the same period in 2024 — followed by imports from Canada and China.
Sheinbaum has been pushing a plan to grow and diversify Mexico’s economy. Ebrard, the economy minister, on Wednesday boasted of a record amount of direct foreign investment, nearly $41 billion, for the final trimester of this year.
“For foreign investment, the No. 1 source is also the United States,” he said. “So I see that the international community or the market is very much in favor of our country, and that trend is going to solidify. Now the challenge is to put our national investment on the same track.”