While many continue to act as if Mexico were the center of the world, both the government and political and business actors, the world is changing without asking for our permission. And perhaps the greatest risk is not only that we are not looking outward, but that when we finally want to, we will discover that the rules have already changed and we are still arguing as if nothing had happened. This scenario, with all its specificities, recalls what happened in the seventies: when the rise in energy prices combined with productive weakness and monetary authorities found no way out without costs. For Mexico and its central bank, the dilemma is especially acute. And the United States—the most critical variable for Mexico—is facing growing monetary dilemmas: a Fed that doesn't know whether to tighten more or wait, while inflation data is surprising again on the upside. The underlying risk is concrete: the conditions that in other episodes have led to stagflation are returning. More expensive energy, more expensive transportation, more vulnerable supply chains, greater caution in investment, and a slowing demand. For central banks, this is the worst of all worlds: they cannot lower rates without fueling inflation, nor raise them without choking off growth. Today we live in one of those junctures. While domestic attention continues to revolve around itself, the recent escalation in the Middle East—with attacks on energy infrastructure in the Gulf and new pressures on the Strait of Hormez—has raised crude oil prices by more than 12 percent in three weeks and has reopened the debate on imported inflation that central banks believed was under control. The impact is not limited to energy. There is no exit without cost. Mexico is not outside the global equation, even if it sometimes behaves as if it could live on the margins of it. Our economy depends on global prices, on the health of the United States, on logistics costs, on investor confidence, and on market sentiment. If the conflict drags on, we will see more price pressure, more exchange rate volatility, and more caution in investment decisions, particularly in the northern export sectors, where margins are already feeling the rise in inputs and freight. The very discourse of nearshoring, the great economic narrative of recent years, becomes more fragile when logistics costs rise and U.S. demand loses momentum. That is why the problem is not just one of information, but of perspective. A political and economic elite can spend weeks discussing internal affairs with enormous intensity and, even so, be misreading reality. There are moments when an entire country seems to look at itself in the mirror so intensely that it stops seeing what is happening around it. Mexico is living one of those moments. The public conversation revolves around itself: appointments, signals, arrangements, alliances, internal struggles. If imported inflation picks up, the margin to continue the monetary easing cycle narrows precisely when internal activity shows signs of fatigue. Keeping rates high in that environment protects the peso and anchors expectations, but it weighs on credit and investment. Lowering them can reactivate the economy, but it exposes the exchange rate and risks unanchoring inflationary expectations. It is a policy that contemplates its own navel. And in doing so, it risks losing sight of the real world. It is often said that all politics is local. The world economy was already growing less. Europe drags structural weakness. It may believe that the axis of the world passes through its own disputes, when the variables that are going to define the year are moving elsewhere: in the Persian Gulf, in maritime routes, in the Fed's decisions, and in the portfolio adjustments of large global funds. There is an irony in all this. Fertilizer prices, and therefore food prices, are going up. Tensions in key maritime routes are raising freight costs, delaying deliveries, and forcing diversions that are pressuring corporate budgets. Financial markets, for their part, have begun to reassess risks: flows towards safe-haven assets have intensified, and volatility recorded its biggest weekly jump in months. All this is happening at a particularly delicate moment. But turning it into a dogma can be a costly mistake, because there are junctures where the decisive factor is not cooked up in one's own public square, but in remote scenarios. China is not quite recovering its dynamism. There is some truth to that.
