Abstract

Mexico has become the seventh world producer of automotive vehicles, but its function as an assembler of parts and components from global firms, mainly from the United States, which absorbs almost 90% of the re-exports. The boom in automotive assembly is associated with two fundamental processes: on the one hand, it culminates the government effort to increase employment and foreign exchange earnings in a critical moment because of the slowdown on electronics re-export. In addition to sustaining and expanding the assembly, the Government is committed to the modernization of the infrastructure, mainly road and ports. On the other hand, the states on Central-Western region, where new plants have been recently opening, have increased their share in the GDP, causing a change at national level. In the first place, this increasing role played by Mexico in global production networks could be
seen as an opportunity to launch an Asian-style strategy for technological learning. However, this is not the case, and not for the reasons that is usually offered, i.e., lack of initiative, but due to long-standing structural problems related to the nature of neo-liberal economic reform, a reform that curtails the scope for strategic action towards new economic policies. The article concludes by stating that an unplanned result of the automotive assembly boom is the emergence of a sort of platform for production and logistics derived from the relative proximity of plants in that strategic region of the country. That platform could open a new opportunity for the integration of local companies as suppliers to automotive global networks, mainly in the service sector. Ironically, this opportunity is not perceived by policy makers, and for the reason state above, its looks like there is no economic policy instrument at hand to
make that change.