Mexico faces a historical contradiction: it has a government that speaks as if it has broken with neoliberalism, yet it retains too many of the economic structures that neoliberalism left untouched. It has rhetoric of sovereignty, but financial dependence.
To create an environment of economic growth with low inflation, financial stability, and high employment, economic policy must stop favoring the financial sector and instead focus on Mexico’s productive sector and employment.
Weak economic growth is a direct result of the rating agencies’ own recommendations that Mexico should restrict public spending & investment.
A change is needed in Mexico’s prevailing economic policy, which has undermined endogenous conditions for capital accumulation, leading to stagnation & dependence on imports and capital inflows, and placing us in a highly vulnerable position at the mercy of international capital.
More than a year and a half into Mexico’s new administration, the assessment is clear: the economic transformation has not taken shape. It is not enough to simply say that the Fourth Transformation continues.
The government must abandon its policy of fiscal austerity and stop responding to international rating agencies and financial capital. It must act in favor of national production & employment.
Mexico avoids straining relations and, at the same time, avoids pursuing an industrial policy that might affect established interests, particularly those of large transnational corporations. External constraints & internal indecisiveness reinforce each other.
Mexico’s banking industry, which profits from interest rates that reduced the spending and investment capacity of the government, businesses, and heavily indebted households; has a bizarrely rosy outlook for 2026.
The government must rethink its economic policy in order to strengthen the national productive sector, advance import substitution to reduce the foreign trade deficit, and curb capital inflows, thereby becoming less susceptible to the vagaries of international events.
By questioning the fiscal deficit and public debt, rating agencies and conservatives aim to limit government intervention in the economy, forcing it to restrict spending and investment, making the economy dependent on the investment decisions of the private sector.