Ciudad de México, 25 de marzo de 2026.- México mantiene una posición favorable, con una calificación soberana que refleja estabilidad y confianza, en un contexto global marcado por ajustes en el comercio internacional, señaló Joydeep Mukherji, Director Ejecutivo en S&P Global Ratings y especialista en calificaciones soberanas para las Américas, durante su participación en Norte Económico, el podcast de Grupo Financiero Banorte.El experto subrayó que México cuenta con una calificación “BBB”, por encima del promedio regional de “BB”, lo que lo ubica en la mitad superior de las economías latinoamericanas. Este nivel, explicó, responde a fundamentos macroeconómicos sólidos, como una política monetaria consistente, un tipo de cambio flexible y la fortaleza institucional.El especialista señaló que, en un entorno de mayor fragmentación del comercio global, México destaca por su capacidad de integrarse a nuevas cadenas productivas, particularmente por su cercanía y relación comercial con Estados Unidos y Canadá. En este contexto, el Tratado entre México, Estados Unidos y Canadá se perfila como un elemento clave para consolidar estas ventajas, ya que brinda certidumbre y continuidad a la relación comercial en la región, incluso ante eventuales revisiones que permitan actualizar el acuerdo.“Al final del día, el acceso que tienen los tres países [México, EE.UU. y Canadá] a los mercados de los demás seguirá siendo muy bueno y continuará siendo una zona preferencial para el mundo”, enfatizó.Si bien el crecimiento económico ha sido moderado en los últimos años, el especialista destacó que esta coyuntura abre espacio para profundizar estrategias que detonen un mayor dinamismo interno. En conjunto, la combinación de estabilidad fiscal, acceso preferencial a mercados y oportunidades de desarrollo posiciona a México como un actor relevante y con perspectivas favorables en la reconfiguración del comercio internacional.La entrevista completa está disponible desde este miércoles en: https://linktr.ee/NorteEconomicoLas opiniones y puntos de vista expresados en este episodio no representan la postura de Grupo Financiero Banorte.
TRANSCRIPCIÓN
00:00:00 Joydeep Mukherji
On average, Mexico’s rating is “BBB”, which puts it in the upper half of the group. If you look at roughly thirty countries, we rate in the region. So Mexico has an investment grade rating and it’s a fairly good rating, especially in Latin America.
00:00:21 Alejandro Padilla
Hola, soy Alejandro Padilla, economista en jefe y Director General Adjunto de Análisis en Banorte.
00:00:27 Lucero Álvarez
Yo soy Lucero Álvarez, periodista y conductora de Norte Económico.
00:00:30 Alejandro Padilla
Bienvenidos a un nuevo episodio en donde hablaremos sobre riesgos geopolíticos en América Latina, cambios en el comercio global, la revisión del T-MEC y el panorama fiscal de la región, con énfasis en México. Comenzamos.
00:00:46 Alejandro Padilla
Ahora haremos un breve cambio a inglés para continuar con la conversación.
00:00:51 Alejandro Padilla
Today we will discuss geopolitical risks and their implications for Latin America, the ongoing shifts in global trade and nearshoring opportunities, the upcoming USMCA review and the regional fiscal outlook with a particular focus on Mexico.
00:01:06 Lucero Álvarez
We are pleased to welcome Joydeep Mukherji, Managing Director at S&P Writing services and sector specialist for sovereign ratings in the Americas. Joydeep, thanks for joining us. Welcome. How are you?
00:01:29 Joydeep Mukherji
Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.
00:01:31 Alejandro Padilla
Joydeep, thank you very much for joining us in this space to discuss topics of interest for our stakeholders. If it works for you, let’s begin this conversation. Amid escalating tensions in the Middle East, roughly twenty percent of global oil supply flows through the Strait of Hormuz, and recent disruptions have already pushed all prices up sharply, at times rising more than ten percent in a single week. At the same time, tanker rates have more than tripled to over one hundred seventy thousand per day, reflecting severe stress in global shipping routes given the conflict in the Middle East and the volatility we have seen in oil prices and global trade routes. Joydeep, how do you assess the balance of risks for Latin America? And do you see more vulnerabilities for the region or could some countries actually benefit from these developments?
00:02:25 Joydeep Mukherji
Well, the region has one advantage, which is that it’s very far away from the events in the Middle East, so the direct impact, the security implications are not going to be felt in the region. So let’s start with that. One bit of good news. However, the indirect impact is largely going to be negative. You’re right in pointing out that there may be a few instances where some countries and some sectors will benefit from the indirect impact of the conflict. But I think for most of the region it’ll be a negative impact to manage. What is the impact indirectly? One is slower world growth in general which hurts everybody. Second is greater uncertainty which delays decision making. People who are going to invest either to buy a new home or to build a new factory are likely to wait a while to see how things settle down, especially on inflation because we’ve seen broad price increases not just in energy prices. But now you can go into food, fertilizer, things like ammonia, nitrates, things like that, sulfur. So that’s a risk in many countries. Access to funding, whenever you have this kind of disruption, financial markets tend to pause and wait to see what happens. They often reopen fairly quickly, so I’m not predicting a large interruption. But, nevertheless, the cost of funding at the margin may go up for some of the lower rated sovereigns and other entities in the region. And finally, there’s sort of the set of unintended or unforeseen consequences of any big change. By definition, we can’t be sure what they are, but there will be some, and that could lead to different patterns of production, different supply chains in the region. And there are some opportunities there. But I think in the short term, the problem is going to be how to manage with higher energy prices. Countries for the most part in the region are net energy importers. You have a handful of exceptions such as Suriname, Ecuador, Brazil and Colombia. Mexico used to be a net energy exporter until a few years ago. Now it’s a slight energy importer on a net basis, so there will not be any positive impact there. But countries in the Caribbean and Central America are particularly vulnerable because they’re big importers of energy and the higher energy prices will hurt them. So it really depends on the exposure a country has to energy and other prices and the ability to manage that shock which will again be different from one country to another.
00:05:08 Lucero Álvarez
Joydeep, we’re seeing a global environment in which US trade policy appears to be moving toward greater use of tariffs and industrial policy. In this context of increasing trade fragmentation, how is Latin America positioned to integrate into new supply chains or benefit from trends such as nearshoring?
00:05:32 Joydeep Mukherji
Yes, this is a very important question because the future growth of the region really depends on answering this question. We have seen prior to the US trade tariffs coming on. Say, go back a few years, Mexico and some parts of Central America were the only regions in Latin America that had really integrated themselves into global supply chains. Most of South America really is not integrated into these chains. Parts of the Caribbean, maybe small elements are integrated. So even before the world changed, the integration was really limited in Latin America. Now it’s going to be even harder to do this. But I think Mexico and other parts of Central America, like Costa Rica or Guatemala, are still best positioned to do so, partly based on the argument that even if tariff barriers go up against Latin American trade, they’re likely to go up even more against the rest of the world. So, on a comparative basis, the region, especially Mexico, should still have some kind of favored access to the United States. But I think the real fate of this depends on getting better policies at home because even when the US was very, very open, much of the region did not take advantage of that opportunity. Even though many countries, most countries actually have some kind of a free trade deal with the United States. The product is, what do you do once you have access? Are you producing things? Are you getting your act together? I think, in the case of Mexico, there are many attractions for people to move from Asia or other parts of the world to Mexico to export to the US. But we also know that there are many disincentives as well. Whether it’s energy, whether it’s security, whether it’s other sort of policy related issues or investor uncertainty about laws. There are many obstacles at home, not just in Mexico, but throughout Latin America, which prevent these countries from making the full use of the access they already have. So, even if access gets worse with, say, more US trade obstacles, I think the real challenge is at home to get your act together because I’ll point out one thing. Many of the Asian countries living inside China, but many of the Asian countries that have done very well exporting to the United States have done so without a free trade agreement, but they had products which were valuable enough that they were able to sell it even if they had to pay some tariffs on it in the US. And I think that’s the challenge in the region is not just getting access and keeping it, but it’s also producing something that people are willing to buy. In that sense, the industrial strategies of the region have not been very successful in creating the kind of products that the US and other advanced countries will have again. Mexico perhaps is an exception to some extent because it does have some very, very modern, high-tech products that are sold in the US, but not enough to create much dynamism. So, in that sense, I don’t think there’s any grounds to be complacent, but I wouldn’t be completely pessimistic that the region can’t do it, I think it can.
00:08:48 Alejandro Padilla
Very interesting what you just mentioned Joydeep. Indeed. I think that regional integration is going to be crucial for increasing trade, even within a changing backdrop of trade with tariffs coming from the US and all these structural changes that we have been observing in the last years. But what you mentioned, I think connects perfectly with one of the main topics that has been discussed in Mexico that has to do with the USMCA review as the United States - Mexico - Canada agreement, the USMCA in the US, we call it T-MEC in Mexico, CUSMA in Canada, but all the same thing, it comes up for review. It is worth noting that intra-regional trade among the three countries exceeds 1.5 trillion dollars on an annual basis, making it one of the largest trade blocks in the world. And Mexico alone has become the top trading partner of the US accounting for something around 15.7% of total US imports. This year we begin the review process of USMCA. And from your perspective, what are likely to be the most sensitive issues in the discussion, and what are the opportunities that could this process create for Mexico in terms of investment, trade, and deeper regional integration?
00:10:21 Joydeep Mukherji
Yeah, that’s a very good question. Let me start on the opportunity side and then on the threat side. The relationship between the Mexican government and the Mexican private sector, and I’m talking about local companies, not foreign companies. The relationship between the private sector and the government has been difficult for many years. Now, going back to the period of Andrés Manuel López Obrador till now, perhaps there’s been somewhat of an improvement recently, but on the whole there is distrust and a lack of coordination. Not everywhere, but this is certainly there. And I think when you are under a common threat of losing access to the US market, that is a good reason for the government and the private sector and other parts of society to work together and maybe put aside some differences and focus on a common problem. And to some extent, I think that’s happening. The issue for me is to what extent this approach to dealing with the US threat can actually lead Mexican actors and Mexican institutions to work in greater harmony, to fix some of the problems at home, because the problem is not just a potential loss in the US market. The problem is Mexican companies don’t invest very much in Mexico because of other reasons, not because they’re exporting, but because of domestic problems. So this is an opportunity, with the threat posed by Washington for perhaps a reconfiguration of the understanding of different sectors of Mexican society which could lead to more investment in growth. So that’s on the positive side. On the negative side, I think our base case is that the privileged trade relationship between the three countries will remain. The details will change, it will be less free trade, but it’ll still be at least preferential access trade. And on a comparative basis, we still think that Canada and Mexico will come out better than other countries will. That doesn’t mean everyone’s going to win, but I think it means that this relationship, and you gave the numbers to show how deeply integrated the countries are, I don’t think that’s going to fall apart. And last year we actually saw Mexican exports to the US went up despite all the trade barriers, because US demand went up and Mexico could produce those products. The question is if these agreements have now become less valuable because the US has questioned them, has rejected aspects of them. So even if you come to a nice new agreement later this year, let’s say, after the review of the free trade deal happens and everyone agrees on a new deal, people will not feel that this is going to be untouchable for the next 25 years. There’s still going to be a perception that, well, they can change this next year or the year after, or they can modify this so it does not serve as a strong policy anchor the way the original free trade deal had been. Now, that means that people will still invest, people will still trade, but the assurance, the confidence that came from this document is going to be less, and people have to base their confidence increasingly on something else, either just the underlying economic sense of working in Mexico to sell to the other two countries or for producing better products at a better price which makes you competitive even if there’s tariffs on your product. So I think these are the challenges to upgrade the industrial sector and attract more investment, knowing that there will always be some uncertainty there. But as I said, our base case is that the treaty, the free trade agreement does survive. There are some difficult aspects of the negotiations because Washington also wants Mexico to do things on immigration and on drugs. And I think there’s been a lot of progress there, and Trump doesn’t seem to raise those issues as much as he used to. There’s obviously going to be some compromise on aspects of the free trade deal, like domestic content regulations and how much of a product has to be the value added has to be made in either one of the three countries. How much can be done from outside steps to keep out Chinese inputs from products that are sold to the US. These are difficult issues, but I think they can be resolved because the discussions have taken place and there’s a common ground there for everyone to agree on one very difficult issue. Very hard to predict is on the security side because the US government has made certain demands on Mexico regarding the narcotraffic problem and the security issue. This is a very sensitive issue. It gets into sovereignty and things like that. I think the Mexican government has been quite clear in protecting its sovereignty on this issue, but nevertheless, there could be frictions here between what the US wants and what the Mexican government is prepared to do. I don’t have a particular insight or opinion on this, but I just cite this as a non-economic issue which is very important, at least for the US in this negotiation, and that may have an impact on the negotiation even if there’s an agreement, let’s say, on the purely economic parts of the trade agreement. So it’s a very complicated process. We don’t think it’s going to be resolved anytime very soon with a new signing ceremony. We think it’ll drag on, but we think at the end of the day the access that the three countries have to each other’s markets will remain very good and will still be a preferential zone for the world.
00:16:30 Lucero Álvarez
In Mexico, we’re waiting for the renegotiation of the trade agreement. It is very important for the region and for both to invest. And on the other hand, looking at the fiscal landscape across Latin America. How would you characterize the region’s position today in terms of debt levels, fiscal deficits and policy flexibility? And within that context, how do you assess Mexico’s position relative to its peers? What do you think about it?
00:17:03 Joydeep Mukherji
On average the sovereigns that we rate in the region, the rating is around “BB” something between “BB” and “BB+” something like that. On average Mexico’s rating is “BBB”, which puts it in the upper half of the group. If you look at roughly thirty countries we rate in the region. So Mexico has an investment grade rating and it’s a fairly good rating, especially in Latin America. Almost every country in the region has this fiscal problem that you mentioned, and that has to do partly with fiscal policy. But it also has to do with economic growth. If you have low economic growth, you don’t have too many tax revenues and it’s very difficult to run a low budget deficit when you have social spending needs. This is true from Chile to Mexico, with nothing unique to Mexico. But the difference is, if your economy grows at three, four percent a year, you’ll probably have enough tax revenues to take care of most of your spending needs and run a small deficit and have low debt. And that’s the case of countries such as Chile in South America. But in the case of Mexico, this has been the problem because growth has been lower than other countries at the same level of per capita income. And there are other countries in Latin America as well, including Brazil and Argentina, which have the same issue. So this low growth problem, which is a structural problem, it’s not because of commodity prices or interest rates, but because this problem has created fiscal problems. And what we’ve seen in the last few years is that the debt of the governments as a share of GDP has been going up in much of the region. It’s not going up at an astronomical rate. It’s a slow increase, at least in most countries such as Mexico, but it has gone up and that can only be bad news for the rating. Now, on the other hand, we also look at many other things, like the exchange rate, monetary policy, the Central Bank, and Mexico has a lot of strengths in those areas. So the debt is not the only thing that’s driving the rating analysis of Mexico or South America. The fear from the rating angle is that with the global situation becoming worse and more uncertainty, it makes it harder to have good economic growth. And in many countries you have internal problems which also make it hard to have good economic growth. In a country like Peru, the problem is rotating governments with a new president every few months, not even every few years. In a country like Argentina, it’s a history of instability. In a country like Mexico, there’s no problem with stability or institutionality. Those are very, very strong. The problem is that the country has not grown for many years. And I’m not talking about just now. I’m talking about going back many years into previous presidencies. This is not the blame of one president or one party, and that is contributing to the fiscal problem that we see. So the region is not sliding down our rating scale. Our rating actions have been moderate in the last few years. And we’re not foreseeing a significant downgrade in sovereign ratings this year. However, at the margin, risks are more negative than positive, partly because of this slowly increasing burden of debt. If the debt were to create good assets that earned money, then there’s no problem. Then you’d have a greater capacity to bear the debt. But what we’re seeing in countries like Mexico or Central America is the debt is going up slowly. But we haven’t seen the asset creation on the other side of the debt to boost GDP growth to reach, repay the debt in the future. So that’s the warning that we have for the region.
00:20:53 Alejandro Padilla
Thank you, Joydeep. Very interesting assessment of what’s happening in the region and with a very specific focus on Mexico and maybe regarding what you were mentioning about low growth, let’s see which kind of effects we can have with these changes in trade dynamics and with nearshoring and anything that we have been talking about this regional integration. And also let’s see what happens with the development of Plan Mexico and other investment programs in Mexico that will allow a better environment in terms of growth. So thank you very much. It was very useful. And to close this episode on a more personal note, we like to ask our guests for recommendations. Is there a recent book on economics or history or international politics that you would like to recommend to our audience? And if this conversation were happening over a glass of wine, what wine would you choose?
00:21:56 Joydeep Mukherji
Thank you. Those are nice questions for the book. I would actually recommend a book that was written two hundred fifty years ago by Adam Smith called “The Wealth of Nations”. This is the two hundred fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the book. Because “The Wealth of Nations” is not just really an economics textbook. It’s more sort of a broad book meant for a general reader who’s not a specialist. There’s no math in it, but there’s a lot of good English describing the world and how he thinks the world should be organized, not just economically, but in many other ways. So I would recommend when we’re also concerned about trade and free trade and T-MEC and all of that, go read the original source. It’s a very good read written two hundred fifty years ago, “The Wealth of Nations”. Regarding the wine, ever since I started working in Latin America, my favorite wine has been Malbec from Argentina. I’m sorry to any Mexican listener on this call, but I’ve had good Mexican wine from Baja California and other places, but the best wine for me is still Malbec.
00:23:10 Alejandro Padilla
Thank you very much. Joydeep. We really appreciate not only your comments about the economic outlook, but also with these recommendations. I think that regarding the book, that’s a fantastic choice. I mean, “The Wealth of Nations” really laid the foundation for modern economics, and its insights on trade and markets are still incredibly relevant today, as you mentioned before. And, well, I think it was also a very good choice in terms of wine. At the end of the day Argentina’s Malbec is known for its rich flavors and smooth finish and definitely a favorite for many wine lovers. So thank you very much. What do you think about this, Lucero?
00:23:51 Lucero Álvarez
Yeah, Mexico and Argentina have amazing wines. The book is a very good recommendation. I like the topic sounds interesting, so I will consider it. And as for the wine, it sounds like a very good alternative too. Thank you for sharing these amazing options and thanks for sharing with us.
00:24:12 Joydeep Mukherji
Thank you very much. I really enjoyed it.
00:24:15 Alejandro Padilla
Thank you very much for your insights, Joydeep This will certainly be very valuable for our audience. We hope that you come back with us again soon. Thank you very much.
00:24:25 Joydeep Mukherji
Thank you. You’re welcome.
00:24:26 Alejandro Padilla
Y bueno, ahora cambiamos a español…bueno, y también me despido en español porque tu español es muy bueno, Joydeep. Muchas gracias.
00:24:34 Joydeep Mukherji
Gracias.
00:24:35 Alejandro Padilla
Con esto llegamos al cierre de este episodio de Norte Económico, el podcast de Grupo Financiero Banorte para entender el horizonte de la economía. Les agradecemos por acompañarnos una vez más y les recordamos no olvidar activar su campanita, ya que todos los miércoles está un nuevo episodio. Por lo pronto, cuídense mucho y les mandamos un fuerte abrazo. |
