Mexico and the United States
By The Economist
From The Economist
Published: November 30, 2012
America needs to look again at its increasingly important neighbour.
Nov 24th 2012 | from the print edition
NEXT week the leaders of North America’s two most populous countries are due to meet for a neighbourly chat in Washington, DC. The re-elected Barack Obama and Mexico’s president-elect, Enrique Peña Nieto, have plenty to talk about: Mexico is changing in ways that will profoundly affect its big northern neighbour, and unless America rethinks its outdated picture of life across the border, both countries risk forgoing the benefits promised by Mexico’s rise.
The White House does not spend much time looking south. During six hours of televised campaign debates this year, neither Mr Obama nor his vice-president mentioned Mexico directly. That is extraordinary. One in ten Mexican citizens lives in the United States. Include their American-born descendants and you have about 33m people (or around a tenth of America’s population). And Mexico itself is more than the bloody appendix of American imaginations. In terms of GDP it ranks just ahead of South Korea. In 2011 the Mexican economy grew faster than Brazil’s—and will do so again in 2012.
Yet Americans are gloomy about Mexico, and so is their government: three years ago Pentagon analysts warned that Mexico risked becoming a “failed state”. As our special report in this issue explains, that is wildly wrong. In fact, Mexico’s economy and society are doing pretty well. Even the violence, concentrated in a few areas, looks as if it is starting to abate.
Mañana in Mexico
The first place where Americans will notice these changes is in their shopping malls. China (with more than 60 mentions in the presidential debates) is by far the biggest source of America’s imports. But wages in Chinese factories have quintupled in the past ten years and the oil price has trebled, inducing manufacturers focused on the American market to set up closer to home. Mexico is already the world’s biggest exporter of flat-screen televisions, BlackBerrys and fridge-freezers, and is climbing up the rankings in cars, aerospace and more. On present trends, by 2018 America will import more from Mexico than from any other country. “Made in China” is giving way to “Hecho en México”.
The doorway for those imports is a 2,000-mile border, the world’s busiest. Yet some American politicians are doing their best to block it, out of fear of being swamped by immigrants. They could hardly be more wrong. Fewer Mexicans now move to the United States than come back south. America’s fragile economy (with an unemployment rate nearly twice as high as Mexico’s) has dampened arrivals and hastened departures. Meanwhile, the make-up of Mexican migration is changing. North of the border, legal Mexican residents probably now outnumber undocumented ones. The human tide may turn along with the American economy, but the supply of potential border-hoppers has plunged: whereas in the 1960s the average Mexican woman had seven children, she now has two. Within a decade Mexico’s fertility rate will fall below America’s.
Undervaluing trade and overestimating immigration has led to bad policies. Since September 11th 2001, crossing the border has taken hours where it once took minutes, raising costs for Mexican manufacturers (and thus for American consumers). Daytrips have fallen by almost half. More crossing-points and fewer onerous checks would speed things up on the American side; pre-clearance of containers and passengers could be improved if Mexico were less touchy about having American officers on its soil (something which Canada does not mind). After an election in which 70% of Latinos voted for Mr Obama, even America’s “wetback”-bashing Republicans should now see the need for immigration-law reform.
No time for a siesta
The least certain part of Mexico’s brighter mañana concerns security. This year has seen a small drop in murders. Some hotspots, such as Ciudad Juárez, have improved dramatically. A third of Mexico has a lower murder rate than Louisiana, America’s most murderous state. Nevertheless, the “cartels” will remain strong while two conditions hold. The first is that America imports drugs—on which its citizens spend billions—which it insists must remain illegal, while continuing to allow the traffickers to buy assault weapons freely. American politicians should heed the words of Felipe Calderón, Mexico’s outgoing president, who after six years and 60,000 deaths says it is “impossible” to stop the drug trade.
The second black spot is that Mexican policing remains weak. If Mr Peña is to keep his promise to halve the murder rate, he must be more effective than his predecessor in expanding the federal police and improving their counterparts at state level. That is just one of several issues that will test Mr Peña. He cannot achieve his ambition to raise Mexico’s annual growth rate to 6% by relying solely on export manufacturing. Upping the tempo requires liberalising or scrapping state-run energy monopolies, which fail to exploit potentially vast oil and gas reserves. Boosting Mexico’s poor productivity means forcing competition on a cosy bunch of private near-monopolies—starting with telecoms, television, cement and food and drink. That means upsetting the tycoons who backed his campaign.
This newspaper gave Mr Peña a lukewarm endorsement before July’s election, praising his economic plans but warning that his Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ran Mexico in an authoritarian and sometimes corrupt manner for most of the 20th century, has not changed much. Facing down interests within his own party may be Mr Peña’s hardest task. The head of the oil workers’ union is a PRI senator. The teachers’ union, which is friendly with the party, is blocking progress in education. A new labour reform has been diluted by PRI congressmen with union links.
Mr Peña, a good performer on the stump, should appeal beyond the PRI to a broad consensus for change among Mexicans. Time will tell if he measures up to the task. But the changes in Mexico go beyond the new occupant of Los Pinos. The country is poised to become America’s new workshop. If the neighbours want to make the most of that, it is time for them to take another look over the border.
from the print edition | Leaders
©The Economist Newspaper Limited 2012
墨西哥崛起 取代中國？
2012-11-28 天下雜誌 511期 作者：經濟學人
到二○一八年，墨西哥將成為美國第一大進口來源國，「墨西哥製造」即將取代「中國製造」。墨西哥的崛起，讓老鄰居美國也不得不正視。
墨西哥，離美國好近又好遠。歐巴馬與墨國新總統尼托會晤在即，美國若想分享墨西哥崛起的果實，必須重新檢視她過時的對墨政策。
美國對這位鄰居向來興趣缺缺。今年總統大選辯論，歐巴馬與副總統候選人拜登，在六個小時的辯論中，完全沒直接提到墨西哥。
事實上，十個墨西哥國民，就有一個住在美國。若把子女也算在內，美國有三千三百萬墨西哥人，約佔總人口十分之一。
墨西哥經濟成長表現也很亮眼，論規模，ＧＤＰ勝過南韓；去年經濟成長率則超越巴西，今年也將會是如此。
三年前，美國國防部的報告還擔心，墨西哥會成為一個「失敗國家」。但現在已今非昔比。墨西哥在經濟或社會各方面都表現非凡，就連治安也在轉好。
儘管目前美國進口的商品，主要仍來自中國，中國飛漲的工資與國際油價等因素，迫使更多瞄準美國市場的製造商，轉移生產基地。
墨西哥出口的平面電視、黑莓機和冰箱，數量已是世界第一，汽車和航太用品的佔比，也在攀升。依照目前趨勢，到二○一八年，墨西哥就會成為美國第一大進口來源國。「中國製造」將不敵「墨西哥製造」。
美國下一個主要工廠
美國政客向來致力於防堵美墨兩千英里長的邊界，但他們現在可以別忙了。美國經濟低迷，失業率比墨西哥高，現在通過邊界的人，回墨西哥的比入境美國的還要多。
儘管墨西哥的治安正緩慢改善，還是社會的一大隱憂。
毒梟猖狂的主要原因有二：美國對毒品的大量需求，以及墨西哥國內警察制度的敗壞。
新總統尼托的挑戰，主要在兌現他經濟成長六％的競選承諾。但只靠製造出口是不夠的，還應該大刀闊斧民營化國營能源事業，好讓豐富的儲油和天然氣發揮最大效用。
包括電信、電視、水泥、食品、自來水等寡佔事業，也都應該走向競爭開放。雖然，這意味著激怒支持他當選的大亨們，但非做不可。
墨西哥即將成為美國下一個主要工廠，不容小覷，現在該是美國思考如何與鄰居打好關係的時候了。（劉光瑩譯）
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