The Baker Institute’s Mexico Center provides policymakers, the public and industry leaders with quality, data-driven analysis of the policy issues that affect both Mexico and the United States. The center’s nonpartisan research assists public policy coordination by framing problems, providing policy alternatives and aiding informed decisions that account for both U.S. and Mexican interests. In conjunction with actors in both countries, the Mexico Center envisions a future in which coordinated policy decisions provide for harmonious interaction in North America, thus maximizing mutual benefit for everyone living in the region.
Over the last three decades, Mexico has significantly transformed. The country’s economy — once centered on agriculture and commodities — is now the 14th largest in the world, with a major emphasis on manufacturing and services. The North American Free Trade Agreement made Mexico and the United States leading trade partners, with half a trillion dollars in merchandise moving across their border every year. At the same time, Mexico’s middle class has grown substantially and will continue growing throughout the next decades. Mexico’s upper and middle classes also represent a major source of tourism in the United States, surpassed only by Canada, and with more annual tourists and visitors than those from the United Kingdom, France and Germany combined.
Mexico’s border with Texas constitutes over 60 percent of the entire U.S.-Mexico border, and serves as the passageway for 60 percent of trade between the two countries. With Houston’s robust energy and biomedical industries, demographic importance for the Hispanic and Mexican diasporas, and strong economic ties with Mexico, the Mexico Center is uniquely positioned to address key policy issues facing the binational agenda.
Public policy coordination between Mexico and the United States can be facilitated through original empirical research on relevant policy issues, the exchange of ideas and public events with decision-makers in both countries, and public policy advocacy. To accomplish these goals, the center reaches out to scholars and experts on both sides of the border, and gathers input from government officials, the private sector, opinion leaders and the general public in order to devise policy recommendations for both countries.
