Under increasing pressure and threats from Wall Street and the Trump administration that they would be subjected to the same scorching tariffs as Brazil and India, the Mexican government of Claudia Sheinbaum announced on Sept. 11 that Mexico would be slapping a 50% tariff on Chinese car imports. [As reported by Financial Times,](https://www.ft.com/content/677df57b-6c83-48c6-9ec5-57bd0eb4693f, Mexico was the world’s biggest buyer of Chinese-made cars in the first half this year, according to data from Shanghai consultancy Automobility.
“Washington has put heavy pressure on Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to stamp out Beijing’s growing influence in the country’s economy, which has recorded a years-long climb in Chinese imports and investment,” FT reported. Washington complains that China has been using Mexico as a “backdoor” for goods to circumvent high U.S. tariffs.
The justification provided by Mexico’s Economics Minister Marcelo Ebrard was laughable to anyone familiar with how the Mexican economy actually works: He claimed that the 50% tariff on Chinese cars was being applied to protect the Mexican auto industry. Ebrard said that “the Mexican automobile industry is 23% of national manufacturing. So we have to protect it.”
The reality is that what Ebrard calls “Mexico’s auto sector” is in fact maquiladora assembly plants that export the vast majority of their production back to the United States, as part of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Free Trade Agreement, or USMCA.
