Bringing Supply Chains Back to Mexico

Book excerpt: International trade and investment have been buffeted over the past three years by US-China trade war tariffs, high-technology export controls, and other economic sanctions targeting Chinese policies. The COVID-19 pandemic has further disrupted production and created bottlenecks transporting goods within and between countries. International businesses have had to recalibrate their supply chains to make them more resilient to these and other shocks. Firms needing to diversify from China are now considering whether to reorganize production across Asia to complement continuing Chinese operations or to shift investment out of Asia to shorten supply chains serving the US market. The most promising candidate for large-scale nearshoring is Mexico, but so far at least, Mexico has not lured substantial new investments that could supplant Asian production serving the US market. In a collaborative effort to explore the feasibility and benefits of relocating production to Mexico, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) organized a group of leading scholars and former officials to offer their individual perspectives in this collection of short essays. The Peterson Institute for International Economics and the Center for Strategic and International Studies are grateful to Chubb Ltd. for its support of this project.