Mexico is planning to work with the rest of North America to attract manufacturing investment across the Pacific from Asia and reduce large trade deficits with the region, the Treasury Secretary said on Friday morning. Rogelio Ramirez de la O.
In an act in which the Secretary of Energy of the United States participated, Jennifer Granholm, Ramírez de la O said that in the coming weeks more details will be presented on how industrial capacity could be boosted in the region, helping to reduce bottleneck in the supply of goods.
The head of the Treasury pointed out that the president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador he had floated the idea at a summit of North American leaders in November last year. The official made the comments while Granholm was visiting the country to address the neighboring nation’s concern that Mexico’s energy policy is undermining investment.
“The project that we have and that you are going to know more about is a project to bring manufacturing plants from Asia to North America. Not only to Mexico, to all of North America,” explained the Secretary of the Treasury.
AMLO has sent Congress a bill that would strengthen state control of the electricity market to the detriment of private companies, which has caused alarm among the main investors in the country and has upset many of Mexico’s diplomatic allies.
Lopez Obradorattributes his initiative to change the Constitution to favor the CFE to a matter of national security, alleging that previous governments biased the market in favor of private capital, weakening public finances and harming consumers.
However, critics say his proposal is hurting investment in wind and solar energy, will increase costs and will make Mexico too dependent on fossil fuels used by the state power company.
In his speech, Granholm highlighted the importance of North America working together to promote the use of renewable energies for collective economic benefit and of resolving pending issues regarding Mexico’s plan for its electricity market.
