Tesla has never made an official investment application in Mexico

MEXICO - The automotive company Tesla has not registered the arrival of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Mexico, informed Raquel Buenrostro, Secretary of Economy.

‘We have no record of Tesla's investment (…) They have made announcements in the media, but they have not made any official, institutional arrangements, in accordance with the Law on Foreign Direct Investment in Mexico,’ she said.

In early March 2023, Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed that his company will build its electric car ‘gigafactory’ in Mexico.

"Days later, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced that he had refused to grant a 50% subsidy to Tesla for the installation of battery plants, eliminating the project. Nor did Tesla obtain subsidies for the new car plant," according to the federal government.

On 23 July, Musk announced that there is no point in investing in Mexico if Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump returns to the White House and imposes high tariffs on vehicles produced in the Latin American nation.

‘Trump has said he will impose heavy tariffs on vehicles produced in Mexico, so it wouldn't make sense to invest much in Mexico,’ Musk said at a conference with analysts on the occasion of the presentation of Tesla's financial results for the second quarter of 2023.

Asked whether Musk's pause affects investment in Mexico, Buenrostro replied: ‘You have seen that it doesn't; we have announcements, historic announcements, and also the records have been historic: in the first quarter we had US$20 billion (in FDI), which is more than 50% of what we had last year. Investment is going very well.