Mexico is the source of US economic growth

Mexican labour can be found in everything keeping the US economy afloat.

As the US and Mexico announced that they’d be beginning official talks for the Joint Review of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), the Mexican Embassy in Washington published a series of stats set to entice Mexico-skeptics with hard stats.

The numbers are meant to show how interlinked and mutually beneficial the bilateral economic relation is. It remarks on how much Mexican companies invested in the US in 2025—$61.7 billion dollars. It also highlighted how Mexico buys more from the US than China, Japan, and South Korea put together.

The headline figure was the big number at the top—total bilateral trade, amounting to $873 billion dollars or $1.7 million a minute.

It’s all very impressive but also meaningless to the uber-skeptics in the Trump administration.

Donald Trump, as an economic nationalist, is particularly keen for countries to buy more from the US and for the US to buy less from them. Mexico’s dependency on selling lots to its northern neighbou puts it in a weak negotiation position. The refrain from the White House over the past year has been: “The United States holds all the cards; it doesn’t need anyone else.” These numbers as presented contribute to this argument.

If Mexico exports $535 billion dollars to the US and imports $338 billion, the Trumpian mind may well be expected to see this:

Yikes.

Yet, these stats don’t go far nor deep enough. So, jump down this economic rabbit hole and find out just how far down this relationship really goes.