Brazil has been affected in recent weeks by suggestions of a slow down in Brazil’s usually hot economy. Inflation in China also has received some attention. The result was that some market studies have been done on the BRICS and emerging economies showing that countries like Mexico, South Africa and …
Carlos Slim is well known in Latin America and abroad as one of, if not the wealthiest CEO in the world. He was even mentioned on the Colbert Report this past week introducing him to the American public as someone who’s net worth trumps that of Mitt …
While the eyes of the American public are often turned toward the Middle East or Asia on foreign policy matters, America’s interaction with Mexico is perhaps the most ingrained foreign policy relationship. The Foreign Policy Association (FPA) emphasizes this partnership in its 2012 Great Decisions Television Series, aired by PBS. …
Latin America’s technocrats spent the second half of 2011 on mushy footing, unsure what effect the euro zone crisis might have on the region and afraid that China might experience a “hard landing.”
Now some of the region’s wonks are expressing more confidence. “Latin America has never been better equipped to …
Mexico’s presidential election, to be held July 1, looks like a foregone conclusion. President Felipe Calderón’s right-wing National Action Party (PAN) has fallen far out of favor due to Mexico’s terrible drug violence. In the past 5 years, the drug wars have killed over 45,000 people. The Northern border city …
At 101 years old, the National Autonomous University of Mexico is one of Latin America’s premier universities, and one of its largest, with over 300,000 students enrolled. Last month, UNAM started posting its archives and teaching materials on the Internet—for free. See www.unamenlinea.unam.mx.
In part, political pressure against the university …
Latin America’s two largest economies started 2011 on different notes. Mexico’s growth was set to ring up about 4 percent, with drug violence clipping about a point off growth, according to BBVA Bancomer, and reliance on a weakening U.S. economy wielding another discount. In April, auto production, a key industry …
Mexico’s peso has been topsy-turvy since October 2008. The classic explanation is that developing countries with open capital markets, like Mexico, get hurt by a flight to safety in times of global uncertainty. Sure enough, after the collapse of Lehman Bros. and the onset of the global financial crisis, the …
In little over a week since officially entering Mexico’s 2012 Presidential contest, the campaign of the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s (PRI) Enrique Peña Nieto already finds itself in full damage control following an embarrassing performance by the candidate during the presentation of his new book, and disparaging comments made …
Mexico has been slow to mend from the repeated stabs of a drug war, declared in 2006, and the blunt pummel of America’s recession in 2008. But 2011 showed more signs of recovery than relapse.
At least 40,000 Mexicans have been killed from drug-related violence over the past five years, and …
Conventional wisdom holds that Mexico’s economy marches in lockstep with America’s. Mexico sends most of its exports to the US, after all, and Mexico is a middle class nation thanks in large part to the country’s integration into the North American economy.
But on 22 November …
For the second time in President Calderon’s administration, a secretary of interior (Secretario de Gobernación) has died in what government officials have prematurely dubbed as an aerial accident. Francisco Blake Mora, the de-facto second in command in Mexico’s executive branch, was en route to a conference …
In my last post I discussed why multinational investment has started to split between China and other destinations, including Mexico, in recent years. But wages are a shrinking fraction of overall production cost—across many manufacturing sectors wages are a tenth to a quarter of overall production costs. Why?
Automation makes wages …
China has been the world’s factory floor for over a decade, but its manufacturing dominance is abating. Sure, a significant amount of investment will continue to enter the Middle Kingdom, if for no other reason than to target its burgeoning middle class, but factory investment that used to automatically go …
Last Friday the first long-haul Mexican truck entered the United States, fulfilling its express design. Mexican trucks should have been allowed onto U.S. interstates by 2000, but lobbying by the Teamsters union kept Mexican trucks within an earshot of the border. U.S. dithering has been clearly unfair (Canadian trucks have …
