In the new context of commercial fragmentation and productive reconfiguration, Mexico's competitiveness will depend less on exporting more goods and more on mastering the services that make them possible. This translated into a clear phenomenon: Mexico consolidated a surplus in goods with the United States, yet maintains a persistent deficit in services, especially in financial services, intellectual property, and digital services and platforms. The above is the result of an incomplete negotiation: formal openness vs. real capabilities. Although NAFTA and later the USMCA include chapters on services (financial, telecommunications, digital trade), the negotiation was limited in depth of regulation and insufficient in terms of national capability development. Its omission in the services area left Mexico in a position of partial integration, unable to fully capture the value of globalization. This is particularly serious in the current context: digitalization of the economy, the rise of data-based services, and nearshoring with technological content. The implications for the Plan Mexico and future renegotiation will be multiple. This imbalance has had profound structural consequences for the Mexican economy. Deep integration in manufacturing, lag in services. To which would be added a university-company articulation policy (UNAM as a key node). It is necessary to seek a reduction in the structural deficit in services, an explicit strategy of substitution and scaling up is required, as well as the development of national service providers in export chains. Here we could mention the development of a broader maritime industry, through the construction of large-draft vessels that could transport Mexican goods. In other words, it was not a strategy for developing services, but a partial opening under conditions of asymmetry: the United States exports knowledge-intensive services, while Mexico participates mainly as a consumer or as a subordinate link. The structural trap was that there was an incomplete specialization. From this perspective, the lack of a robust negotiation on services contributed to what could be called an 'incomplete specialization trap': in this way, Mexico integrates in manufacturing (with relatively low added value), but does not scale towards advanced services, which are the ones that capture the most value in global chains. A complementary domestic policy would also be required that strengthened capabilities in: engineering, software, and national financial services. However, the Mexican maritime industry is more focused on repair, maintenance, and the construction of smaller or specialized vessels for the oil and defense industries, rather than large commercial vessels (container ships/bulk carriers), here it is worth recalling the failed experiment of Unidos Veracruz in Veracruz. However, services—financial, digital, logistical, professional—did not experience equivalent liberalization. Facing a possible review of the USMCA, this gap opens a strategic agenda: a) Active negotiation in services that included effective access to markets for professional services; more symmetrical regulation of digital platforms; Integration of value chains in services (not just goods). One of the least discussed—but most relevant—features of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and its update in the Agreement between Mexico, the United States, and Canada (USMCA) is the asymmetry between the liberalization of goods trade and the weak integration of services trade. This strategy was fully understood in Asia, the main producers of commercial ships worldwide are concentrated mainly in Asia, with China, South Korea, and Japan dominating most of the production. NAFTA achieved significant productive integration in manufacturing, particularly in sectors such as automotive, electronic, and transportation equipment. In 2023, China consolidated its leadership by building more than 50% of the world's ships. Mexico, a country with one of the largest coastlines in the world, has 11,122 km of coastline, surpassing that of the two Koreas. From this perspective, this structural failure is the true limit of the USMCA. In this way, we could argue that the USMCA did not fail for what it did, but for what it did not do.
