What The Hell America!

As Mexico’s government looks to upgrade its economy and navigate the uncertainties of U.S. trade, climate and environmental concerns are not its top priority. “Like Build Back Better, the pitch of Plan Mexico is really about shared progress,” said Maximiliano Véjares, a senior research associate at the Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab at the Johns Hopkins University, and author of a recent report on Mexico’s industrial policy.  “There will be gender equity and an effort to take care of the southern states, which are the least developed. We will invest in these industries, and the energy transition will be fair. The discourse is about equality.” Mexico is committed to investing in EVs and renewables because they can be engines of strategic growth for a country with ample experience making cars and electronics, and an abundance of wind and sunshine. 

That’s not to say Morena is uninterested in either climate change or the many benefits of cleaning up the grid, electrifying transportation, and reducing pollution. The reason it has the latitude to do those things, however, is the strength of a political project built on delivering tangible quality-of-life improvements. AMLO’s government brought 5.1 million people out of poverty and increased the minimum wage by 85 percent above inflation, bringing wages overall to record highs for Mexico and shrinking income disparity. Fourteen million Mexicans received cash transfers as part of an unprecedented expansion of social programs for retirees, disabled people, and students. 

Bidenomics and Plan Mexico may share similar goals, but they are premised on a wildly different theory of politics. With a razor-thin Congressional majority, Biden’s tariffs and tax breaks were meant to nudge the private sector to simultaneously deliver export dominance, economic progress, and votes. In contrast, by the time Sheinbaum took office, Morena had “demonstrated to the people that if the government intervenes in the market and imposes conditions, they’re going to have a better life,” as Romero put it. “Industrial policy builds on that trust.” Like the Olinia project, the future of Plan Mexico remains to be seen. What’s clear, though, is that Mexico’s voters have granted Sheinbaum and Morena as robust a democratic mandate as any government could hope for to drive forward an ambitious, twenty-first-century developmentalist project: to pass ambitious legislation that support the project’s goals, experiment with new forms of economic governance, and build lots and lots of stuff.