Last week, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard announced upcoming high-level meetings with China to analyze, among other topics, the feasibility of tariffs that Mexico has been applying since January to countries with which it does not have a free trade agreement. This is creating an environment that, on one hand, suggests the renegotiation of the USMCA will be much more complicated than anticipated and will test the Mexican government in many ways. On the other hand, it requires Sheinbaum to focus on formulating a commercial and foreign investment policy to address the growing protectionism and the redefinition of the international order that is taking shape from the beginning of Trump's first term. Mexico finds itself in a vulnerable position where it will have to negotiate separately with its three main trading partners and main suppliers for the rest of the year, and decisions made with one country will impact relations with the others: with the United States at the USMCA table, which represented 37.6% of its total imports last year; with China, from which it imported 20.1% of the total in 2025; and with Canada, which accounted for 1.9% of its total imports, although for now, we do not know if this will be at a bilateral or trilateral table. However, if Mexico insists on maintaining these restrictions, the 'Plan Mexico' becomes a dead letter, and the opportunity to attract very important projects, such as those in the artificial intelligence sector or others that may arise from the treaty update with the European Union, is lost. We can expect the meetings with China to begin after Trump's visit to Beijing on May 14 and 15, when we will learn if both sides maintain the tariff truce. Together, these three nations represent nearly 75% of Mexico's total trade: the United States 60.3%, China 10.8%, and Canada 2.6%. To date, we officially do not know the reasons why Mexico decided to apply tariffs to products that are mostly used for production in our country. By then, Mexican negotiators must have held at least two rounds with the USTR, and Ebrard will have met with Dominic LeBlanc when he leads a business delegation to Canada between the 7th and 9th of next month. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce's report on Mexican tariffs highlights that most of Mexico's imports are semi-finished goods that are not found or produced in the country, which could create bottlenecks for producers and increase production costs. To date, neither the USTR nor Global Affairs Canada has announced the date of their first bilateral meeting, but according to the NTE report, there are no significant new problems between the two countries. In February, Undersecretary Vidal Llerenas met with China's chief negotiator, Li Chenggang, but no details of the conversation or announcements about immediate plans were offered. Trump's declining popularity, which according to last week's latest CNN poll stands at 31%; the lack of results from his tariff policy, which has not created the expected jobs — Department of Labor figures indicate a net loss of 98,000 jobs last year; and the high probability that Democrats will control at least the House of Representatives — all point to the USTR adopting a very tough stance during the treaty renegotiation. The NTE report states that draft reforms to the law have been prepared to address some of these complaints, but they have not even been sent to committees for analysis. According to INEGI, 76.8% of last year's total imports were intermediate products and inputs for production, 8.5% machinery and capital goods, and 14.7% final goods. Additionally, the United States will demand solutions to most of the complaints about non-tariff barriers, which, on one hand, Marco Rubio delivered to Sheinbaum in September and which the NTE report includes in this year's edition, where new topics appear, such as environmental ones. To resolve the most important non-tariff barriers, such as access for private capital to lithium production and a greater role for it in energy generation, legislative changes are required that are not currently foreseen to be approved by the president.
