In the face of Trump's threats, industrial policy

In recent weeks, President Trump has traveled the world, trying to impose a new American order on the global economy, and the response of governments has been reactive, trying to minimize the damage. However, no strategy has been established to counteract this avalanche. The global economy seems stunned by this situation, instead of being proactive. The Mexican economy has assumed this reactive vision, without having defined a strategy that sets out Mexico's industrial profile for the year 2030, which is when there will be a new presidential change and, therefore, a new industrial policy.

The fault lies in the way planning exercises are carried out in Mexico; it seems like a recipe for good intentions instead of establishing clear and defined goals. In recent decades, the construction of industrial plants was reactive to the industrialization strategy dictated by the Free Trade Agreement, creating complicities that defined new manufacturing spaces from the center of the country to the northern border. Policy makers were not very concerned about the design of a more ambitious strategy that would integrate the production plant and define supplies from a perspective of reducing costs, instead of defining the development of national chains that would increasingly include national producers in all regions of the country. The result was a diffuse and confusing map that left entire regions on the sidelines.

The country is having a hard time structuring a national planning system, especially in the industrial sector, where external pressures are gradually taking shape, creating a disjointed manufacturing plant. This structure has given rise to a segmented structure that requires an infinite number of supplies from abroad and is therefore extremely vulnerable to what happens in the global economy. The best way to solve this disorganization is by redesigning the productive structure to build more integrated capacities and not by imposing tariffs on Chinese supplies. Imposing tariffs without planning will not solve the problem and may cause the disarticulation of productive chains. Faced with this situation, it is necessary to join forces to develop resilient productive chains with the capacity to adapt and overcome adverse situations, such as traumas, tragedies or threats.

In order to start a process of this nature, in the industrial case, the Chambers must be given life, so that they are the ones that structure this new industrial vision encouraged by the government. In this sense, their structure must be redesigned, since they are not designed to monitor dynamic industrialization processes and even less to propose import substitution that can help strengthen national content. This process requires reviving the associations between the productive and academic sectors so that universities contribute to redesigning supply chains. It is a task that cannot be left to an enlightened bureaucracy or to international organizations whose interventions can be useful as part of an industrial renewal structure. However, it is necessary that the industrial redesign processes be in the hands of those who build and produce the goods on a daily basis and calibrate the input needs for the new production batches.

The ultimate goal will be to transform Mexico from a manufacturing country into an innovative country, which requires a great effort of coordination and cooperation between the different instances of the public sector and universities, especially engineering departments, which are underutilized in most cases.

The exercise of industrial policy demands a restructuring of the productive and educational apparatus, the effort could be driven by a renewed public sector that coordinates the efforts, because just as there is a need to integrate productive chains in the country, it is also required to restructure universities in a more productive vision, the system must change so that universities are linked to the productive sector, as happens in much of the world, where universities generate knowledge and register patents in a spectacular way, in 2023 China obtained: 1.64 million applications, United States: 518 thousand 364 applications, Japan: 414 thousand 413 applications, South Korea: 287 thousand 954 applications, Germany: 133 thousand 053 applications. Meanwhile, Mexico obtained 10 thousand 987, of which only 694 were from Mexicans. A great effort of coordination is required to be able to face the changes in the global environment. It is necessary to direct energies towards a change in the industrialization paradigm, where innovation is the guide to promote a new stage of development that is more creative and less maquila-based.