Economics: The Mexican automotive sector closes 2025 in negative territory, facing considerable challenges for 2026
On Tuesday, January 13, U.S. President Donald Trump made several statements, first during a visit to a Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan, and later before the Detroit Economic Club. He referred to the USMCA as "irrelevant" for the US, claiming it offers "no real advantage" and could be renewed or not; that the US does not need cars made in Canada or Mexico and that the goal is to bring their manufacture back to the US. Furthermore, he boasted that thanks to his policies, this is already being achieved, with investments from automotive companies in the US, which are in turn abandoning Canada and Mexico.
This occurs in a context in which, by the end of 2025, the Mexican automotive industry had already been affected, both by the tariff uncertainty driven by the Trump administration and by other factors that have decreased automotive production and sales in the US (and of Mexican exports of auto parts caused by this), such as the cancellation of the electric vehicle incentives program last September. Thus, the production of automobiles and auto parts in Mexico showed considerable declines in the fourth quarter, and this is not expected to reverse at the beginning of 2026.
Regarding the week's indicators, it was reported that private consumption posted strong growth of 4.1% YoY in October, maintaining its recovery trend after growing at around 2% the previous month. However, year to date it remains practically stagnant (0.5% annual). The rebound in this measure is not expected to maintain the same strength at the beginning of 2026, as it was mainly driven by an increase in the consumption of imported goods (20.6%). This increase was caused by the greater availability and lower prices of imported goods from October to December 2025, following significant arrivals of Chinese products in anticipation of tariffs that took effect during January of this year. Even so, it is considered that private consumption has bottomed in recent months and will begin to show a slight recovery, albeit with weak growth, in the range of 1.0% to 1.5% on average for 2026. On the other hand, it was reported that Gross Fixed Investment (GFI) registered a significant contraction of -5.8% YoY in October. That brought the cumulative decline for the January-October period to -7.4%, continuing the trend that began in the second half of 2024.
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