Greater Mexico City uses politics, not economics, to draw investment

To stand out among nearshoring heavyweights, the country's populous centre bets on a party political alliance.

We’ve seen strategies like this triumph before. Back in 2018 the US presented its winning FIFA World Cup bid. In it, the US preemptively parried suggestions that this was an application from a country historically disinterested in “soccer.” The United 2026 bid was instead the presentation of the North American superfan football block. By including Mexico and Canada, the US—an unlikely contender—won the day (and the lion’s share of the matches).

Unexpected alliances have often trounced individual competitors with more obvious advantages. When it comes to the central Mexican states that surround and include metropolitan Mexico City, opportunity might now have come in the form of a political pact. Recently, the State of Mexico, the state of Hidalgo, and Mexico City have united to stand a chance of getting in on some of the nearshoring boom against other superior industrial competitors across the country. 

“We had to join up to compete against northern Mexico, el Bajío [the states sandwiched between northern and central Mexico], and western Mexico,” a senior state official told The Mexico Political Economist. 

So, in February of this year and after months of talks, the heads of all three governments came together to announce the creation of the Central Mexico economic zone. The agreement the State of Mexico, Hidalgo, and Mexico City signed is, in part, an economic development plan to pool their resources to integrate infrastructure, security, and promotion initiatives. But chiefly, it is a political marketing ploy. In it, a hitherto unintegrated region is now trying to reframe itself as a block consisting of a quarter of the country’s GDP and workforce.

It is a political team up to define the future of Mexico’s most populous region.