Amid U.S. efforts to strengthen supply chains and counterbalance China’s growing influence, Mexico is poised to benefit from “nearshoring,” writes scholar Adrian Duhalt. This brief explores how the Inflation Reduction Act and rising trade tensions between the U.S. and China could help Mexico secure its top trading position with the U.S. for years to come.
Although Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is confident that measures implemented in the first half of his tenure will help Mexico to achieve energy self-sufficiency, his optimism must be weighed against the evidence, writes nonresident scholar Adrian Duhalt. In this brief, Duhalt explains the flaws in López Obrador’s plan and why Mexico is unlikely to achieve energy self-sufficiency anytime soon.
As iron ore, copper, and lithium producers, Brazil and Chile have a competitive advantage in the global energy transition. This brief outlines the countries' opportunities to profit from their exports while reducing their domestic consumption of fossil fuels.
Although once known for its robust urea and ammonia production capabilities, Mexico found itself particularly vulnerable to soaring international fertilizer prices in 2021. With the global circumstances surrounding the spike in prices likely to linger through 2022, and Mexico's state-owned infrastructure still hampered by technical issues, the impact could be borne all the way to dinner tables in the form of higher nutrient prices for local farmers and food inflation.
With its significant reserves of critical metals and other geographic advantages, Chile is well positioned to help enable the energy transition. The authors discuss the country's leveraging of its copper and lithium resources and its growing trade with China.
As a potential producer and exporter of green hydrogen — a fuel that can be burned without producing greenhouse gas emissions — Chile is at the forefront of the global energy transition. However, becoming a major exporter of green hydrogen is not without its challenges, writes the author.
In the near term, a ban on shale development in Mexico will have little impact since factors like limited infrastructure and access to water would likely stall progress in any case, the authors conclude. In the long-run, a ban may adversely affect efforts to diversify Mexico’s gas supply.
Adrian Duhalt, Anna B. Mikulska, Michael D. MaherMay 3, 2019
The mix of good short-term prospects for oil revenues along with long-term market uncertainties has a clear policy implication for oil-dependent Latin American economies: use the larger short-term revenues to diversify their economies, nonresident fellow José Antonio Ocampo writes in a new issue brief.
The revival of domestic production of urea (i.e., nitrogen fertilizer) in Mexico could become one of the key elements to delivering food sovereignty, one of President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador major campaign promises, postdoctoral fellow Adrian Duhalt writes in this issue brief.