La Jornada: The country must define a position for its relationship with the US and China: Dussel Peters

In 2025, Mexico faces a historical crossroads comparable to the one it experienced when neoliberalism was imposed as a development model in the 1980s, with consequences that defined the course of the country for decades, said Enrique Dussel Peters, a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, in his book Mexico at a historical crossroads: Between the new national security of the United States and cooperation with China.

The decision that Mexico makes or avoids making, says the founder of the China-Mexico Studies Center (Cechimex), about how to simultaneously relate to the two main powers in the world will have long-term implications.

From his point of view, the Mexican elites, understood as the Presidency, the Congress, the political parties, the business organizations and the academy itself, have been failing to keep up with the global changes that involve China for decades, which is why it is urgent to open a national strategic debate that defines an explicit position regarding the systemic competition between Washington and Beijing, and that outlines a long-term agenda with both powers.

He points out that the urgency of this debate is explained, in part, by the magnitude of the bilateral trade relationship. China is Mexico’s second trading partner and its presence has grown steadily in the 21st century. In 2024, Mexico’s trade deficit with China reached 120,717 million dollars, the historical maximum, with a ratio of 14.3 imported units for each exported unit.

At the same time, Mexico accumulated a trade surplus with the United States of 251.1 billion dollars.

This structure is not accidental, he explains, given that the export model that Mexico adopted since 1988, based on attracting export manufacturing with minimal tax burden for companies, generated increasing dependence on imported inputs. In this way, in the 21st century, China massively replaced the United States as a supplier of these items.

Since 2017, when Washington first recognized China as “great power competition,” the bilateral relationship between the world’s two largest economies has entered a phase of systemic confrontation spanning technology, trade, investment and security.

National security, the priority

Dussel Peters coins the concept security shoring to describe the US strategy that subordinates any economic ties with third countries to the priority of its national security. It stands out that Mexico appears mentioned twice in the Trump administration’s national security document published in 2025, designated as a “springboard” for Chinese exports to the US market.

This pressure led to the tariff package that the Mexican government approved in December 2025 and which came into force on January 1, 2026. The measure raises tariffs to 1,463 fractions imported from countries with which Mexico does not have a free trade agreement, including China.

The simple average of these tariffs is 28.95 percent, although Dussel Peters’ analysis shows that the weighted tariff on total Chinese imports amounts to only 9.78 percent, because almost half of what Mexico imports from China was not included in the package.

China responded in September 2025 with a formal investigation into Mexican trade barriers, which could conclude with countermeasures. The researcher warns that the possibility of an escalation in the trade sphere in 2026, precisely when the Treaty between Mexico, the United States and Canada is being renegotiated, “is realistic and worrying.”

The above occurs in a context in which the United States has proposed, among its objectives for the review of the T-MEC, to strengthen the traceability mechanisms for Chinese investments in Mexico, to raise the rules of origin in sectors such as auto parts and automotive to exclude inputs of Chinese origin and to maintain controls on regional high-tech exports to China.

Dussel Peters also documents that the bilateral institutions created by Mexico and China in the 21st century have operated with a lack of follow-up that he describes as unacceptable. The Permanent Binational Commission, the highest body for dialogue between both countries, has not met since 2014.

The High Level Investment Group held its last session in 2015. Issues identified since the first meeting of these bodies, such as the trade imbalance or statistical differences in the registration of investment flows, never received a concrete response.