Until recently, the accepted wisdom in Mexico was that Mexico’s economy is simply too integrated with the US and Canada’s and too dependent on the US for it to be able to join the BRICS. Economically speaking, it seemed to make little sense: Mexico shares with the US the world’s largest trade partnership as well as a significant trade surplus whereas with China it has a significant — and growing — deficit.
For years rumours have abounded, sometimes even from credible sources, that Mexico was on the brink of joining the BRICS. In the lead-up to the 15th meeting of the BRICS summit in Johannesburg in August 2023, South Africa’s Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor claimed that Mexico was among more than a dozen countries that had applied to join the alliance.
Mexico’s flag was even among the 14 featured on the purely symbolic BRICS banknote Vladymir Putin flashed for the cameras at the 16th BRICS summit in Kazan last year (it’s the one in the middle of the far-right column). As we noted at the time, the stunt probably amounted to little more than expert trolling from Putin. Russian Embassy spokesman Andrei Zemskiy recently acknowledged that the USMCA makes it much more difficult for Mexico to join the BRICS.
Each time the rumours reached fever pitch, the Mexican government batted them down. President Andres Manuel López Obrador (aka AMLO) reiterated time and again that Mexico’s goal is to strengthen North American trade and cooperation. Mexico’s geographic reality, he said, left it little choice but to pursue further economic integration with the US and Canada:
We cannot shut ourselves off, we cannot break up, we cannot isolate ourselves. It is a fact that we have 3,800 kilometres of border, for reasons of geopolitics (presumably in reference to the US’ invasion, occupation and appropriation of more than half of Mexico’s territory in the mid-19th century). With all due respect, we are not a European country, nor are we Brazil. We have this neighbourhood and, furthermore, if we agree on things, as we have done, we can help each other out… Our economic integration is already well advanced.
But as we noted last week, if anyone is able to change this dynamic, it is Trump 2.0:
…either through its constant bullying or its wilful destruction of the USMCA, a trade deal that Trump himself brokered and which Trump himself called the “best trade deal ever” just five years ago.
Over the past week, Washington has declared Mexico a foreign “adversary” together with the likes of Iran, Russia and China. It has also imposed potentially ruinous sanctions against two Mexican banks and a brokerage house for allegedly laundering money for drug cartels without presenting any clear evidence. As is becoming increasingly clear, the move was essentially a shakedown by the Trump admin aimed at getting greater control over Mexico’s banking system as well as its relationship with China.