Mexico Proposes Reviewing Foreign Investments over 49% Under National Security Criteria

ByGeorgina Saldierna

This article by Georgina Saldierna originally appeared in the August 30, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

The Executive sent the Congress’s Permanent Commission an initiative to reform the Foreign Investment Law, which will subject the approval of foreign capital exceeding 49 percent in Mexican companies to a national security criterion. To allow that evaluation, the bill proposes strengthening the National Foreign Investment Commission by incorporating the heads of the Secretariats of National Defense, Navy, and Security and Citizen Protection, as well as of the Attorney General’s Office, the National Intelligence Center, the Tax Administration Service, and the Financial Intelligence Unit of the Secretariat of Finance.

That body will have to review the acquisitions that foreign capital seeks to make for a percentage greater than 49 percent in the energy, transport, health, communications, mining, data processing and storage, digital systems, aerospace, and defense sectors and sensitive facilities, as well as in critical technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, and semiconductors, among others.

The reform states that the inclusion of those authorities is indispensable to prevent foreign acquisitions of Mexican companies that put national security at risk.

If the Mexican company transmits, cedes, hands over, or transfers the shareholding to the investor despite having received the Commission’s denial of authorization for the acquisition, it will be fined between 586,000 pesos and 23,062,000 pesos.

The president of the Permanent Commission and of the Senate, Laura Itzel Castillo, said that the presidential proposal was referred to this chamber.