USMCA’s Biggest Winners? 515 Transnational Corporations

This article by Braulio Carbajal appeared in the July 21, 2025 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier leftist daily newspaper.

The largest beneficiaries of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), formerly known as the North American Free Trade Agreement, have been large transnational corporations, especially those from the United States, which have increased their presence in our country based on low manufacturing costs, including precarious wages that they cannot offer in their countries of origin. In fact, just 515 large companies account for 75 percent of Mexican exports.

Mexico has entered a pattern of productive specialization, based on the integration of these large transnational corporations into value chain models. These corporations have benefited, first from NAFTA and now from the USMCA. In other words, we can hardly claim that these are exports from Mexican companies, given that nearly 515 large corporations account for approximately 75 percent, and we are talking about those that have primarily benefited from the USMCA, emphasized Óscar León, professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

In an interview, he commented that, given a context in which U.S. President Donald Trump is using bilateral trade as a weapon to achieve his own interests, President Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration must consider and analyze who the real winners of the agreement have been over the past 35 years.

If we recap and analyze, the beneficiaries are not Mexican firms, much less micro, small, or even medium-sized ones, which make up 99 percent of our companies, but rather large transnational corporations, primarily from the U.S., which in Mexico have encountered production and manufacturing costs that they cannot afford elsewhere in the world, he explained.

The trade specialist explained that of the total foreign direct investment that arrives in the country each year, approximately half is destined for the manufacturing sector, specifically in industries related to what is later recorded as exports. This includes automotive, auto parts, electrical, electronic, and medical device industries, among others. These are primarily exports of transnational companies, many of them American-based.

He added that even the agri-food sector—which is considered a winning sector under the agreement—is dominated by large companies, mainly American, which account for the bulk of agricultural exports, including products as important as tequila, beer, avocado, tomatoes, berries , and peppers, among others. These agricultural products are in high demand in the United States and represent a $50 billion annual business.

The specialist clarified that the idea is that Mexico must seek new markets and, above all, overcome the unfounded fear that it is the most affected by the trade war promoted by Trump, given that its own companies are the ones that benefit the most from the USMCA.

Our trade dependence on the United States, with more than 85 percent of exports going to that country, makes us very vulnerable to this relationship being used as a tool to pressure us with other agendas of U.S. interest. And the big question is whether we’re interested in continuing under this pressure, because a revision of the treaty is coming, which is more of a renegotiation, and the pressure will continue throughout the Trump administration, he pointed out.