This editorial by José Romero appeared in the May 8, 2025 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier leftist daily newspaper.
In a world undergoing geopolitical reorganization and where powers are redefining their productive priorities, Mexico has launched an ambitious development strategy: Plan Mexico. Conceived as a roadmap toward 2030, this plan seeks to reindustrialize the country, increase domestic content, substitute imports, and strengthen the domestic market.
The official narrative is seductive: a nation emancipating itself, modernizing, and investing in its people and its territory. However, when examining the plan’s instruments, alliances, and priorities, a question arises: Are we witnessing a true commitment to economic sovereignty or a sophisticated version of functional dependency?
Plan Mexico realistically recognizes that the world economic order is undergoing an accelerated transformation: the decline of multilateralism, the technological war between China and the United States, and the return of economic nationalism force countries like ours to rethink their international integration strategy. It is no longer enough to open borders and hope for miracles in foreign investment. Mexico needs an active, coordinated, and sustained industrial policy.
Thus, the plan sets forth desirable and necessary objectives: generating 1.5 million jobs in specialized manufacturing, achieving 50% national content in strategic sectors, relocating supply chains, producing pharmaceutical and electronic technology domestically, and consolidating regional development hubs. But what is promised in the rhetoric does not always coincide with the structural logic underlying the policy.
The centerpiece of the plan is attracting foreign direct investment, without conditions regarding technology transfer or mandatory local content. Global companies act as “anchors” of development, while Mexican micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises are relegated to the role of peripheral suppliers. There is no clear scaling system that leads them to innovate, export, or compete on a level playing field. The model reproduces the old dream of the maquiladora, now with 4.0 technology and well-being rhetoric.
Strategic sectors—semiconductors, electromobility, pharmaceuticals, agribusiness, and petrochemicals—are conceived not as platforms for building national capabilities, but as free trade zones where regulation is reduced, permitting is accelerated, and the regulatory framework is standardized with the US
Strategic sectors—semiconductors, electromobility, pharmaceuticals, agribusiness, and petrochemicals—are conceived not as platforms for building national capabilities, but as free trade zones where regulation is reduced, permitting is accelerated, and the regulatory framework is standardized with the US. In fact, the plan contemplates the direct participation of foreign agencies such as USAID and the Wilson Center in the design of technological, educational, and logistical priorities. Under the guise of cooperation, decision-making sovereignty is blurred.
It is revealing that, while invoking technological self-sufficiency, the Mexican government has not proposed a national innovation strategy based on public universities, its own technology centers, or Mexican intellectual property. Nor is the creation of an industrial policy governing body, as Korea, Vietnam, or even Brazil have done in the past, contemplated. The focus is on market dynamism, with the State acting as facilitator.
More worrying: the plan does not place Mexican capital—that is, nationally owned companies—at the center of the strategy. This clarification is not insignificant. Under the international legal framework, any company that legally operates in Mexico receives “national treatment,” even if its capital is foreign. In other words, a company can be considered “national” for legal purposes because it is incorporated under Mexican law, without its ownership, control, or profits remaining in Mexico.
This is a legal fiction that should not be confused with a policy to strengthen Mexican businesses. What the plan omits is a firm commitment to forming, consolidating, and scaling Mexican companies, capable of being original sources of innovation, generators of quality employment, and promoters of autonomous capacity building. Without this national productive capital, there is no domestic innovation. And without domestic innovation, the country is condemned to stagnation or, worse, to subordinate modernization.
This structure leaves the country exposed to risks: industrial centers becoming enclaves disconnected from the rest of the economy; the knowledge generated being captured by foreign subsidiaries; public resources being used to subsidize private investments with no guarantee of national return; and relocation, far from strengthening Mexico, further integrates it into a subordinate cog in the U.S. productive apparatus.
This isn’t about rejecting foreign investment or returning to closed models. It’s about establishing clear rules of the game, with national objectives as a condition. If incentives are granted, they should be in exchange for technology transfer, training of local talent, incorporation of Mexican suppliers, and participation in intellectual property.
If public procurement is relaunched, let it serve to develop genuine national companies and not just to assemble imported inputs. Mexico needs a development model that builds on its capabilities, strengthens its scientific apparatus, increases its endogenous productivity, and defends the public interest. It’s not enough to have products made in Mexico if the intelligence, profits, and decisions come from abroad.
Plan Mexico can be a historic opportunity to build a new path. But to achieve this, it must be revised in its architecture, democratized in its design, and freed from the logic of disguised dependency. Sovereignty is not a slogan. It’s a policy. And that policy must be conceived, financed, and controlled from here.
José Antonio Romero Tellaeche is the Director of the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE)