Against a backdrop of soaring U.S.-Mexico trade and growth along the border regions, the World Affairs Council of San Antonio, Texas, hosted a panel discussion Wednesday titled “U.S.-Mexico Bilateral Relationship: North America as a Region.”
The panel featured former Mexican Ambassador to the United States Geronimo Gutierrez Fernandez; Romanita Matta-Barrera, chief advancement officer for Greater:SATX Regional Economic Partnership; and Jorge Canavati, principal at logistics provider J. Canavati & Co.
The panel moderator was James Creagan, former U.S. Ambassador to Honduras. Creagan also served as a diplomat in Mexico, El Salvador, Peru, Brazil, Portugal, Bolivia and Italy. The event was hosted by the University of the Incarnate Word.
The World Affairs Council of San Antonio is a nonprofit educational forum that meets monthly to discuss foreign policy issues.
Gutierrez said with Mexico becoming the top U.S. trading partner since the beginning of 2023, the economic relationship between the two countries is at a critical point.
He served as Mexico’s Ambassador to the United States from 2017-2018, during the negotiations of the United States of America, Mexico and Canada Agreement.
“What is remarkable is the concept of our economic integration and North American integration, it has been extremely resilient,” Gutierrez said. “We are at a different stage and in some ways, on uncharted territory. The relationship is still very volatile, and I’m not sure where exactly we are going.”
Mexico’s trade with the United States’ totaled $415.4 billion from January through June, the highest total ever recorded for the time period, according to the latest data from the Census Bureau.
Related: US-Mexico trade hits record $415B through first half of year
“Mexico is now the United States number one trading partner, above China, above Canada, above the whole of Europe together,” Gutierrez said. “We’re trading billions of dollars a day. But at the same time, you have huge tensions that we have not been able to work out, on security, fentanyl, migration, and you just had the president of Mexico actually call for a pause in the relationship.”
On Tuesday, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said his administration has paused its relationship with the U.S. and Canadian embassies in the country.
The pause came after the Canadian and U.S. ambassadors criticized a proposed judicial reform supported by Lopez Obrador to hold public elections for federal judges, including Supreme Court justices.
Proponents of the reform say it will boost the country’s democratic process and help fix a judicial system that they say does not serve the public, while critics say it could make the courts more susceptible to criminal and political influence, according to Reuters.
“You have a very unique situation in which there’s much more interdependence, especially on the economic front, but pretty remarkable political tensions,” Gutierrez said. “Then you add the geopolitical context, where everything is changing, where China is clearly in a strategic competition with the United States, and that implies a bunch of things from Mexico.”
Canavati said South Texas and Northern Mexico should cooperate more as an integrated economic region to keep trade flowing. Canavati is also vice president for the North America Importers and Exporters Association of Mexico.
“This is a totally integrated economic region, and this region competes with the world, such as China and other parts of the globe. But we still have to work on that,” Canavati said. “We don’t talk much about it. We don’t promote it much. [The Mexican state of] Baja, California, they do an extraordinary job in their economic integration work, especially in advanced manufacturing, which we have a lot of here.”
Canavati added that one success story for South Texas and Northern Mexico is the Toyota manufacturing plant that opened in San Antonio in 2006. Today, the plant has more than 3,800 employees who assemble Tundras and Sequoias, as well as the more than 20 on-site suppliers that employ an additional 5,600 people.
The Toyota plant in San Antonio is also part of a logistics chain that includes Tier 1 suppliers in Mexico.
“The Toyota plant is a classic example. When that plant came here many automotive parts suppliers in Mexico developed, and they supplied this plant,” Canavati said. “A rail service started from Monterrey, because the supplier of the chassis to the San Antonio plant is in Monterrey. Air cargo services started from here to Mexico and back to ship auto parts. If new plants start in Mexico, we applaud it, because it has a positive effect here. And the same goes the opposite. It’s one system, and that’s how we’re going to compete with other regions of the world.”
Matta-Barrera said the increased trade and commerce between Mexico and the U.S. helps create more jobs. Greater:SATX is an economic and workforce development initiative for the San Antonio region. Matta-Barrera leads the organization’s workforce, local business engagement, and advocacy and influence efforts.
“Our mission for our organization is to ensure the shared prosperity of our region through the diversification of jobs with high wage, high growth jobs,” Matta-Barrera said. “That puts us in alignment with a lot of what we’re seeing in some of these high growth industries in Mexico.”
