Ratcheting Down the Industrial Ladder in Mexico
This chapter analyses Mexico’s deteriorating economic relationship with China, tracing its reform trajectory from the adoption of NAFTA in the 1990s, to China’s WTO entrance, and to the ways China’s rise is exacerbating tensions between Mexico and the US today. The author argues that Mexico failed to implement public policies and institutional reforms to bolster companies and position them to perform successfully under NAFTA. Instead, elite policymakers chose to rely on a neoliberal hands-off industrial development strategy, effectively kicking away the ladder of state guidance for industrial promotion, reducing such tools as public credit, tax breaks, trade tariffs, and so on. This led to Mexico’s incorporation into China’s internationalized development strategy as an importer of Chinese goods, which has left it with a massive trade deficit with China over the past twenty-five years.