Mexico City – Facing possible economic consequences of the planned tariffs of the United States, the Mexican authorities are pressing the White House to exclude Mexican vehicles and car parts of the planned taxes of 25% of President Trump in car imports.
“We do not want to lose a single job in our country,” said a gloomy president Claudia Sheinbaum at her morning news conference on Thursday. “There is space for conversations, for collaboration, for negotiation.”
Mexico is looking for a continuation of the current Free Trade Regime of North America in car imports, said Marcelo Ebrard, Minister of Economy of Mexico.
“If we are moving to such a high tariff system, what we have to look for is preferential treatment for Mexico,” said Ebrard, who appeared through a video link from Washington, where he has met with senior Trump administration officials. Ebrard said that he had already known six times with the United States Secretary of the United States Howard Lutnick, underlining the crucial importance of the tariff problem for Mexico.
The Mexican authorities have also been looking for American cars manufacturers, to a large extent that they depend on Mexican components and assembly, which have also resisted import taxes and qualified Trump's predictions of automotive production quickly renewed in the unrealistic United States.
“It is not so easy to transfer a plant [from Mexico] to the United States, ”said Sheinbaum.
The manufacturing sectors of vehicles and multimillionaire auto parts of Mexico, overwhelmingly oriented to exports to the United States, represent a crucial axis of the Mexican economy. The industry uses more than 1 million people directly, not including tens of thousands of collateral jobs in transport, logistics and other fields.
The Mexican president, who has maintained what she calls a “cold” approach in the controversial discussions of round trip rates with the Trump administration, said that Mexico would not formulate a complete response, which could include retaliation tariffs against imports from the United States, until at least on Tuesday. The new rates will enter into force at 12:01 AM time of oriental day on April 3.
Sheinbaum's silenced reaction contrasted with the global convictions of the new tariff mandates after the Trump firm of an executive order on Wednesday that imposed a 25% rate on imports of cars and auto parts.
“We will fight with US rates with commercial retaliation actions that will have the maximum impact on the United States and the minimum impacts here on Canada,” said Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to journalists on Thursday. The Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, accused that “free trade is being damaged … [and] Multilateraism weakened ”, while Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ihiba said he wants his nation to be exempt from tariffs.
But no country is more vulnerable in the front of the rate than Mexico, which has largely set its economic strategy in cross -border businesses since the 1994 implementation of the Free Trade Agreement of North America, the historical pact known as NAFTA that mainly opened tax free trade between Mexico, the United States and Canada.
In a generation, the automotive sector of Mexico has transformed from a company to a domestic extent into a global force. Mexico is now the number 1 exporter of cars and auto parts to the United States.
General Motors and Ford are among the United States manufacturers in Mexico, along with giants such as Volkswagen, BMW and Nissan.
Expanding car trade has helped Mexico become the main commercial partner of the United States, eclipsesting China and Canada. The bilateral trade of the United States-Mexico approached $ 840 billion in 2024, according to the Office of the United States Commercial Representative.
Some experts have warned that Trump's long -range rates proposals could send the economy of Mexico, already experiencing slow growth and investor confidence, to a recession.
“Whatever the coup we receive reverberated throughout the economy,” said Francisco González, president of the National Autopartes Industry, the Radio El Haldo de México.
During his first presidential mandate, Trump condemned NAFTA as “the worst commercial agreement”, blaming the pact for encouraging US companies to seek cheaper labor in Mexico, thus scaring the manufacturing base of the United States. Trump negotiated the Successor of the NAFTA, the United States-Mexico Agreement, or USMCA, which entered into force on July 1, 2020.
A key USMCA reform was a requirement to reinforce the content of North America for vehicles that receive preferential tariff treatment. USMCA increased regional content mandates from 62.5% to 75% for cars and light trucks and 70% for heavy trucks.
Content rules reflect the complex nature of the manufacture of contemporary cars, which depend largely on international supply chains and the components sent through the borders.
In his automotive rate order on Wednesday, Trump included specific sizes for importers in Mexico and Canada that operate under USMCA.
The 25% tariff would be applied only to the content not produced in cars in imported cars under the North American Free Regime, Trump said. Importers would have the opportunity to “certify” the content of the United States, Trump said.
In addition, Trump said that imported cars under USMCA would remain free of rates until US authorities establish a process to apply duties only to content that does not originate in the United States.
The Mexican authorities called the difficult proposed tariffs, if not impossible, to implement.
Mexican components often constitute 40% of vehicles made in the United States, said Ebrard, who cited the example of an automatic piston that could cross the border seven times.
“Does a 25% tariff charge seven times?” Ebrard asked. “That will not happen.”
On two previous occasions, Trump has stopped planned tariffs on all Mexican and Canadian imports after talking on the phone with Sheinbaum. He has also lavished applause to the Mexican president, calling her “hard” and a “wonderful woman.”
Trump has also praised Mexico for helping to reduce illegal immigration and drug smuggling to the United States, the problems that originally cited to promise to impose duties to Mexican and Canadian imports. However, by implementing automatic tariffs, Trump has not cited immigration or drug trafficking. Instead, he argued on Wednesday that he was acting “to protect the automotive industry of the United States, which is vital for national security and has been undermined for excessive imports that threaten the national industrial base and the United States supply chains.”
The special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed to this report.
