Mexico Reports December Trade Surplus; Manufacturing Offsets Oil

By Anthony Harrup, 1/27/2015

MEXICO CITY—Mexico ran up a trade surplus in December as a jump in exports of manufactured goods, compared with a year before, offset a slump in petroleum exports caused by lower world crude oil prices.

The $254 million surplus last month brought the trade balance for the full year to a deficit of $2.44 billion, the National Statistics Institute said Tuesday. The surplus, smaller than the $1.63 billion surplus in December of 2013, compared with expectations of a $718 million deficit according to the median estimate of eight economists polled by The Wall Street Journal.

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Mexico Says Pacific Free Trade Deal ‘feasible’ in Mid-March

Reuters, 1/22/2015

A deal on a 12-nation Asia-Pacific trade pact could be concluded in mid-March, Mexico’s economy minister, Ildefonso Guajardo, said on Thursday.

“It’s feasible,” Guajardo told Reuters after holding talks in Mexico earlier this week with U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman.

The pact, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), has faced stumbling blocks, in significant part because of wrangling between its two biggest economies, the United States and Japan, over agricultural tariffs.

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U.S., Mexico sign deal to end sugar spat, avert import duties

10/27/14 Reuters

Mexico and the United States reached a deal on Monday to avert potentially steep duties on Mexican sugar imports to the United States, defusing a months-long dispute that threatened to escalate into a major trade war. In the deal hammered out hours before U.S. regulators were going to slap penalties on Mexican imports, the U.S. Department of Commerce said that Mexican and U.S. officials and Mexican sugar exporters initialed a draft agreement that would suspend both anti-subsidy and anti-dumping duties on the goods, if adopted in full.

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Mexico Reports Surprise April Trade Surplus on Manufacturing

Bloomberg, 05/26/14

Mexico reported its third trade surplus in a row in April, the longest streak in almost two years, as manufacturing exports surged, signaling the economy is recovering from a poor start to the year.

The surplus totaled $510 million last month, the national statistics agency said on its website today, more than estimated by any of the nine economists surveyed by Bloomberg, whose median projection was for a $433 million deficit. Foreign sales of manufactured goods, which accounted for 83 percent of exports last month, increased 7.1 percent from a year earlier, the most since September. Automotive exports rose 12 percent.

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IN THE BUSINESS OF BOOSTING CROSS-BORDER TRADE

The San Diego Union Tribune, 11/25/2013

The Mexico Business Center, an arm of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, is on a mission to promote trade between Mexico and San Diego by raising the region’s business profile and strengthening its competitiveness globally while working on improving relationships between Mexico and the United States.

The MBC was established in 2003. Affairs between the two nations have always been a priority for the chamber, and it wanted to advocate specifically on issues relating to cross-border trade and creating an efficient border.

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Op Ed: Mexico’s Growth Has Helped the U.S.

The New York Times, 11/24/2013

Despite challenges that may sometimes seem daunting, the relationship between Mexico and the United States has shown remarkable resilience and has been by and large mutually beneficial. Nafta is largely the catalyst to the strength of this relationship.

Nafta was conceived as a way to increase trade and investment flows by setting a set of common rules to govern trade relations. Trade flows among the three countries have grown well above total output, investment flows have also increased significantly, and the vast majority of trade and investment relations among the three partners occur without disputes.

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Mexico’s Energy Reform: Opportunities for the United States – Op Ed

International Affairs Review, 11/05/2013

Energy reform would positively affect Mexico’s economy and upstream oil production capacity, strengthen U.S. energy security, and provide greater opportunities for energy development and trade in North America.

Mexican oil production has been steadily decreasing since 2004, mostly due to aging oil fields, years of underinvestment, and diminishing returns for the nation’s largest oil field, Cantarell. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates Mexican oil production will continue to decline over the next decade, assuming no dramatic changes in policy or technology. President Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) introduced an energy reform proposal in August 2013 aimed at attracting greater investment from foreign companies to help boost oil production and build a stronger economy. His proposal includes constitutional amendments that would allow PEMEX to undergo profit-sharing contracts with private companies without affording them concessions. The Mexican oil industry would look similar to those of Brazil and Norway, which have state-owned companies that welcome foreign capital to invest in exploring and developing their fields. Experts suggest the administration has the necessary votes to pass legislation for constitutional change, but Peña Nieto is facing considerable opposition from a public that is skeptical of privatization and his greater reform agenda.

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