Mexico has gained the most from the trade war: AmCham

Mexican exports have gained the most from the trade war between the United States and China, according to Pedro Casas Alatriste, executive vice-president and CEO of the American Chamber of Commerce Mexico (AmCham).

“Mexico is the country that has gained two of those eight percentage points (of China's trade with the United States), followed by other Asian countries such as Vietnam, South Korea and India, which are also a derivative of China,” he said.

“Mexico gains two percentage points (of China's trade with the United States), if you gave me a graph to choose from and tell you what nearshoring means, I would show you this graph,” said the executive.

He recalled that the United States in 2017 began what has commonly been called, as the trade war, “with China or decoupling with China.”

The AmCham CEO expressed that the first glimpses of the U.S.-China trade war began in Donald Trump's first administration.

“From that time to date, China has lost about eight percentage points in its integration with the United States in the export market,” he said.

The massive movement of trade flows generated an increase in the trade deficit, said the general director of Amcham.

When Donald Trump took over the US administration for the first time, the trade deficit was close to 63 billion dollars (or 63 trillion dollars), when today, the fast forward “we realize that this deficit grew by almost three times and is now above 170 billion dollars”, he detailed.

“Naturally, we see that the trade flow from China to the United States is of the greatest magnitude, but there is a regional integration of China with its neighbors”, considered Pedro Casas Alatriste.

China exports to its neighbors, a little to the United Kingdom, to Germany, to Mexico, but systematically and in greater depth to the United States,

“The United States has a regional integration, which is what it imports from Canada and Mexico, but there is a massive flow of goods from China and from the first derivative of China, which are all the countries from which China is exporting; and in 2000, the year in which China just started its incorporation to the World Trade Organization, since the vast majority of the world had the United States as its main trading partner”, he pointed out.

He added that if we move the story forward to the year 2023, we realize that the vast majority of South America's number one trading partner is already China.

Unfortunately this story is not particular to Latin America, but to the history of the entire world, concluded the executive vice-president of the American Chamber of Commerce Mexico.