Mexico’s economy contracted by 0.2 percent in the first quarter of the year, revised government data confirmed Friday, a rough start for new President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

The contraction raises the specter of recession just months into the anti-establishment leftist’s six-year term, threatening his promise to “transform” the country and deliver average annual GDP growth of four percent.

The revised number for January to March was the same as the preliminary figure released in April, which took economic analysts by surprise and triggered talk of a possible recession — two or more consecutive quarters of contraction — in Latin America’s second-largest economy.

Mexico’s economy registered zero growth in the fourth quarter of 2018, according to the national statistics institute, INEGI.

Lopez Obrador — widely known as “AMLO” — downplayed the data.

“There’s still time” to reach his target of two-percent growth for 2019, he told a press conference.

MEXICO CITY • Ikea, the world’s largest furniture seller, will open its first store in Mexico next year and plans to launch other stores around the country, the company said on Wednesday, as it expands in Latin America to counter growing competition in its core US and European markets.

The Swedish chain, known for its modern and inexpensive designs, will open a store in eastern Mexico City in autumn next year and also sell its products online, Mr Malcolm Pruys, the country retail manager for Ikea Mexico, said at an event in the capital.

Ikea also plans to target a number of other cities of varying sizes throughout the country, he added in an interview. “We’re setting a reasonably aggressive expansion plan,” he said.

The first store will be medium-sized, offering 7,500 products and a restaurant able to seat more than 650 people, with a warehouse off-site for e-commerce.

Ikea’s traditional model has called for vast warehouses on city outskirts packed with goods. But the retailer has recently developed compact formats, allowing it to branch into smaller cities, Mr Pruys said.

Ikea has 427 stores across 52 markets. Stores in Europe and the United States drive the majority of sales for Inter Ikea Group and its franchisees, but rival retailers, especially online, are increasingly vying for shoppers.

Late last year, Ikea announced plans to enter Latin America, including Chile, Colombia and Peru.

The plans to launch in Mexico began four years ago. On Wednesday, several Ikea executives met Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who was pleased by Ikea’s confidence in Mexico, Mr Pruys said.

“There is great movement in Mexico around cleaning up corruption,” he said. “We think there’s a big opportunity for Mexico’s economy to continue to grow.”

Ikea is working on plans for a variety of payment options for online shopping, aiming to reach Mexico’s vast unbanked population, he added.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration reached an agreement with Canada and Mexico to lift tariffs on metal imports, resolving a yearlong standoff that inflamed North Atlantic tensions and complicated efforts to ratify a revised trade deal.

“I’m pleased to announce we’ve just reached agreement with Canada and Mexico,” President Trump said on Friday. “We’ll be selling our product into those countries without the imposition of tariffs.”

As part of the agreement, both Mexico and Canada agreed to lift retaliatory tariffs on American products. Instead of tariffs, the nations would set up a system for monitoring and enforcement in case of import surges into the United States.

In a statement on Friday afternoon, the United States trade representative said that the metal tariffs would be removed and that both Mexico and Canada “had agreed on the removal of all retaliatory tariffs imposed on American goods by those countries.”

The Mexican government also said that it had reached an agreement with the United States to lift the steel and aluminum tariffs. In a statement issued by the office of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the government said that there would be no quotas.

“Tariff-free trade will be restored in these products,” the statement said.

For its part, Mexico said that it would lift the retaliatory tariffs that it had imposed. Both countries agreed to take measures to avoid dumping and to establish a process to monitor steel and aluminum trade between the two countries.

“Mexico reached a highly satisfying agreement with the United States,” the statement said.

Speaking from Stelco, one of the two major producers in Canada’s steel-making epicenter of Hamilton, Ontario, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada said on Friday that the deal was “pure good news.”

Mr. Trudeau, appearing jubilant, signaled that the lifting of the tariffs could help clear the way for the ratification of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement reached late last year. “We are very optimistic we will be able to move forward in coming weeks,” he said, adding the deal was “a huge step forward.”

The prime minister said that the deal stemmed from steady conversations with the United States, including Mr. Trump, and that both sides agreed that the tariffs were “harming workers and consumers on both sides of the border.”

In recent weeks, the pressure on Mr. Trump to reach an accord with Canada and Mexico began to outweigh his affection for the tariffs.

According to a congressional aide who has been involved in the talks among the three countries, the White House was growing increasingly sensitive to pressure from Republicans in rural states, whose farmers have been suffering from retaliation that diminished their access to sell in neighboring markets. Their problems were compounded when talks with China broke down this month, this person said, and ultimately Mr. Trump decided that he needed a victory on trade.

The decision to ease the 25 percent tariffs on steel and 10 percent tariffs on aluminum came as the White House also announced a six-month delay in determining whether to impose levies on foreign automobiles. That extension delivers a temporary reprieve to global automakers and auto suppliers, which had been bracing for punishing tariffs of up to 25 percent. But it sets up a tight deadline for the president and his advisers to reach trade deals with Japan, Europe and potentially other countries.

Farmers, ranchers and business groups had been pushing to lift the metal tariffs, to encourage Canada and Mexico to remove the tariffs they have placed on American products in return. Canadian and Mexican levies on products like pork, cheese and milk have especially hurt American farmers who are already smarting from Mr. Trump’s trade conflicts with China and Europe.

The agreement is likely to help the administration focus on the other trade fights it is waging, most notably fractious negotiations with China, which nearly collapsed last week. And it will remove one obstacle to the passage of the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement in Congress.

The United States, Canada and Mexico signed that trade deal, the successor to the North American Free Trade Agreement, in November. The pact still needs to be ratified by legislatures in all three countries.

American lawmakers of both parties, as well as Canada and Mexico, had insisted that tariffs on steel and aluminum must be lifted before votes would be held. Lawmakers have argued that the tariffs, while aimed at other countries, hurt American companies and consumers by raising prices for products that use imported steel and aluminum.

Even with an agreement to resolve metal tariffs, the North American pact still faces potential opposition from congressional Democrats. They have criticized its labor and environmental protections as insufficiently weak, and said that its protections for drug companies may undermine their efforts to make health care more affordable.

Canada, like Mexico, has repeatedly said it would not ratify the new North American Free Trade Agreement, which Mr. Trump considers one of his signature economic achievements, unless the metal tariffs were lifted. Canada has argued that the tariffs undermined both countries’ economies and were particularly counterproductive given the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement reached last year.

“Certainly, for the ratification of the U.S.M.C.A., it’s a step forward,” said Patrick Leblond, a senior fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation, a think tank.

In its announcement on Friday, Canada said that the two countries would set up measures to block imports of metals that are unfairly subsidized or sold at below-market prices. In the event of a surge in imported products, the countries would carry out consultations, and if those were not successful, the governments could impose a tariff on the individual product of 25 percent for steel and 10 percent for aluminum, it said.

After Mr. Trump imposed the metals tariffs last June, the move drew anger, bemusement and disappointment in the metals industry and across the political spectrum in Canada. Canadians were irate that Mr. Trump appeared intent on punishing Canada, a major trading partner and traditionally one of its most ardent allies. Backed by all three of Canada’s three major political parties, the Canadian government retaliated with import duties on $12.6 billion of American products, including ballpoint pens and industrial pipes.

The White House’s justification of the tariffs by citing national security drew particular scorn in Canada, where many were already reeling from Mr. Trump’s bullying and mocking of Mr. Trudeau and his trade policies. Some called for boycotts of American products and avoiding taking vacations in the United States.

The American tariffs were particularly punishing to Canada because it buys more American steel than any other country, according to the Canadian government, while nearly 90 percent of Canadian steel and aluminum exports go to the United States. In 2017, the Canadian steel industry employed more than 23,000 Canadians and the aluminum industry about 10,500 workers. After the imposition of the duties, some economists predicted it could cost the Canadian economy more than $3 billion Canadian dollars annually.

Shares of San Mateo-based action camera maker GoPro, Inc. jumped more than 7.5 percent in midday trading today, after the company said it would begin producing U.S.-bound cameras in Mexico in June, in an attempt to avoid President Trump’s escalating trade war with China.

GoPro shares began the month trading at around $5.85 per share, but crossed $7 per share today, representing a two-week gain of roughly 20 percent. The stock hasn’t traded above $7 per share since October.

The camera company said it’s activating a new production line in Guadalajara that will make cameras bound for U.S. retailers. Those cameras will begin appearing on store shelves in the third quarter.

“As stated previously, our decision to move most of our U.S. bound production to Mexico supports our goal to insulate us against possible tariffs as well as recognize some cost savings and efficiencies,” GoPro CFO Brian McGee said in a statement.

GoPro will continue manufacturing cameras in China, but will export those cameras to international retailers. The company initially announced the move in December, anticipating that the trade war with China might continue to escalate.

Their two weeks of gains stands in stark contrast with Cupertino-based iPhone maker Apple Inc., which has seen its shares fall more than 9 percent since the start of the month.

Apple’s supply chain is far more complicated than GoPro’s, and new tariffs on Apple’s entire product line could either eat into the company’s profit margin or get passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices.

Analysts at JPMorgan say Apple would need to raise consumer prices on the iPhone by 14 percent to maintain its existing profit margin, turning a $1,000 phone into a $1,142 phone, CNBC reports. Analysts at Bank of America estimate Apple would have to increase the retail price of the iPhone by 20 percent if it were to shift manufacturing from China to the U.S.

“We estimate the incremental cost of manufacturing iPhones in the U.S. could be 15-25%, and, if passed on to consumers could lead to demand destruction, in our view,” Bank of America analysts wrote.

Trump on Friday raised tariffs on some $200 billion worth of Chinese exports, and threatened to enact new tariffs on the remaining $325 billion of Chinese goods. China responded Monday with retaliatory tariffs on $60 billion worth of American exports.

It appears the Trump administration isn’t all that interested in a deal to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) after all.

Last week, White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney was sanguine about the prospect of Congress rejecting NAFTA’s proposed replacement, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). “You could stay status quo,” Mulvaney told a California business conference. “Your real Plan Bs are either NAFTA or withdraw from NAFTA.”

It might be that U.S. President Donald Trump has reverted to his years-long preference to simply kill NAFTA without replacing it.

Trump won’t budge on the reasonable changes that Congressional Democrats seek to make to the USMCA agreement.

He also seems determined to keep in place the steel and aluminum tariffs he applied against Canada and Mexico about a year ago. And that alone pretty much guarantees that all three national legislatures will reject USMCA.

Citing the harm that Canada and Mexico’s retaliatory tariffs have done in his state, U.S. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, in charge of spearheading USMCA’s passage in the U.S. Senate, said last month that “If these tariffs aren’t lifted, USMCA is dead.”

Yet U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said recently that the tariffs will be revisited only after USMCA ratification. That makes USMCA ratification unlikely.

But the odds of NAFTA’s demise are also low. Only Capitol Hill, not the president, can kill a treaty.

Grassley, for one, won’t be a party to NAFTA’s demise. His state, Iowa, has reaped a quadrupling of agricultural exports under NAFTA.

Canada’s plan for salvaging NAFTA must include continued pressure on U.S. federal and state legislators, and constant reminders of the 12 million U.S. jobs tied to the trade agreement.

MEXICO CITY/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Japan’s SoftBank Group invested about $20 million in Mexican payments startup Clip early this year, one of its first Latin America deals as it launches a $5 billion technology fund in the region, said three people familiar with the matter.

The technology conglomerate’s cash injection was part of a round that raised roughly $100 million, two of the people said last week.

Clip’s valuation after the transaction rose to between $350 million and $400 million, the two sources said. Clip’s total funding to date is roughly $160 million.

Clip told Reuters SoftBank and New York investment firm General Atlantic have invested in the company, without providing details.

SoftBank Latin America chief executive Marcelo Claure declined to comment on Clip in an interview last month.

SoftBank struck the deal shortly before announcing in March that it would launch the $5 billion Innovation Fund focusing on Latin America.

Mexican investors hope the fund’s deep pockets will be a gamechanger for young companies that struggle to fundraise locally.

“Growth will be faster, more dramatic and more competitive,” Fernando Gonzalez, a partner at Virginia-based QED Investors and CEO of Mexican fintech startup Coru, said last week.

SoftBank announced a $1 billion investment in Colombian delivery app Rappi last Tuesday, citing the startup’s swift growth as a sign of opportunity in the region. Along with fintech, SoftBank also plans to target e-commerce, healthcare and mobility.

The $20 million Clip investment is unusually small for a firm that typically leads funding rounds and writes checks at least four times that size. SoftBank is also famed for running the world’s largest technology fund, with $100 billion in capital.

But, unlike Asia and the United States, Latin America is a nascent tech market where startups typically have lower valuations and face less competition, meaning even small cash infusions propel growth. In Mexico, startups rarely raise $100 million in a single go.

Claure, who oversees the fund, said in early April the firm had closed some deals and was in the process of finalizing others. His team has looked at more than 140 companies in Latin America, he added.

SoftBank typically pours cash into the most promising companies in each sector within each region that it targets, aiming to help companies scale fast and push out competitors.

Clip, founded in 2012, offers a mobile credit card reader that fits onto smartphones. Businesses across Mexico such as cafes, corner stores and street vendors have adopted the service as a simple, low-cost way to accept cards rather than just cash.

Investors see Mexico as an attractive market for fintech because many people do not have bank accounts but have access to mobile phones, said Eric Perez-Grovas, general partner at local investment firm Jaguar Ventures.

“You have the perfect elements to create fintech giants in this country,” he said.

Long lines for cargo trucks trying to cross into the U.S. are affecting businesses on the border and beyond, according to testimony before a U.S. House Homeland Security subcommittee in Washington, D.C., this week.

“What we’re experiencing along the border threatens the economic security of our country,” Jon Barela, CEO of the Borderplex Alliance, told federal lawmakers.

The alliance promotes economic development in Doña Ana County, El Paso and Ciudad Juárez.

The hearing before the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border Security, Facilitation and Operations examined the effects of the Trump administration’s policies on border communities.

One result is cargo trucks in long lines backed up into Mexico for miles waiting to cross into the U.S. after 750 Customs and Border Protection officers were removed from ports of entry and reassigned to help Border Patrol agents deal with an influx of migrants seeking asylum.

“We’re in total agreement that the ripple effect could turn into a tsunami for the United States if we don’t solve these wait times, which we are currently experiencing between 8 and 24 hours as we speak,” Barela testified.

Nearly $82 billion worth of trade between the U.S. and Mexico comes through ports of entry annually in the region that includes Doña Ana County, El Paso and Juárez.

“We simply cannot do business in our region nor can the United States afford this sort of ripple effect, which will, again, become an economic tsunami if we’re not careful,” Barela testified.

‘Utter chaos and confusion’ at ports of entry

Companies using New Mexico’s busiest border crossing, Santa Teresa, are also coping with long delays.

“They’re on very tight supply chains, just in time, and those have been disrupted and not just here. The disruption goes all the way back to the Midwest,” said Border Industrial Association President and CEO Jerry Pacheco.

The truck lines had stretched into Mexico up to five hours, but now the lines are about three hours, Pacheco said. The delays are still much longer than usual, and some don’t make it across and into the U.S. before the Santa Teresa port of entry closes at 8 p.m.

“If they’re an hour out, they just sleep in their trucks at night to keep their place in line,” Pacheco said.

The subcommittee chairwoman, U.S. Rep. Kathleen Rice, D-NY, told the hearing that Congress had approved a Department of Homeland Security budget that included $60 million to hire an additional 1,000 Customs and Border Protection officers to staff ports of entry.

“The administration’s border policies, coupled with the president’s threats to close the border altogether and his incendiary immigration rhetoric, have created utter chaos and confusion at our ports of entry,” Rice said in her opening remarks.

More technology needed at border

U.S. Rep. Xochitl Torres Small, a Democrat who represents southern New Mexico’s border region, also serves on the subcommittee and reiterated the impact of long wait times in her district.

“We lost an estimated 20 percent of our workforce, resulting in the closure of multiple commercial lanes and wait time of up to six hours for trucks to cross the border,” Torres Small said.

She wants CBP to employ more technology to protect the border and facilitate trade at busy ports of entry.

“Every day, thousands of trucks and cars pass through our ports of entry. But due to staffing shortages and inefficient technology, only a small percentage of vehicles are scanned by nonintrusive inspection technology for illicit drugs, contraband, and human trafficking,” Torres Small said.

“By investing in smarter and more efficient technology at our ports of entry, such as NII (nonintrusive inspection technology), we are both enhancing the safety of communities across the U.S. and growing our economy through increased flows of legitimate trade,” she said in a statement released Wednesday with Texas Republican Dan Crenshaw about a letter they sent to the acting secretary of homeland security asking for an update on implementing the nonintrusive inspection technology at border crossings.

Torres Small has also co-sponsored bipartisan legislation to hire more Border Patrol agents for rural areas like New Mexico’s Bootheel region.

‘Significant and meaningful’ resources needed

Expert testimony about the effects of policies on border communities at Tuesday’s hearing also included the bishop of the Catholic Diocese of El Paso, the director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, and the Pima County sheriff from Arizona, who represented the Southwestern Border Sheriffs’ Coalition.

Bishop Mark Seitz told the subcommittee about the diocese’s temporary shelters for migrant families seeking asylum.

“My brother bishops and I also remain deeply troubled by the administration’s recent efforts to curtail the ability of asylum-seekers arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border to seek protection,” Bishop Seitz said.

The sheriff of Arizona’s largest border county called on lawmakers for help.

“We need action from Washington, D.C., not partisan politics,” said Pima County Sheriff Mark Napier. “We need significant and meaningful additional resources to bolster both our public safety and our humanitarian efforts to address this crisis.”

Mexican Ambassador to the U.S. Martha Barcena Coqui on Monday said the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement’s pioneering labor reforms shouldn’t be taken for granted.

The U.S. labor movement should “seize the opportunity” and embrace the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement’s (USMCA’s) groundbreaking labor reforms, which were not even considered until Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was elected on July 1, Mexican Ambassador to the U.S. Martha Barcena Coqui said Monday.

U.S. labor organizations have complained that USMCA labor provisions won’t be enforceable, and the AFL-CIO recently announced its opposition to the agreement absent a renegotiation of labor provisions. House Democrats have expressed similar sentiments.

But NAFTA’s state-to-state dispute settlement mechanism, which would be used to enforce USMCA labor provisions, has failed mainly because the U.S. opted to not submit its roster of arbitrators to serve on dispute panels, Barcena said during an event at Georgetown Law School.

USMCA parties can ensure labor enforcement has teeth if they simply submit their lists of panelists at the same time USMCA is ratified, Barcena said.

“You will never find another partner as [the Mexican] government,” Barcena said in response to a comment by AFL-CIO trade and globalization policy specialist Celeste Drake. “Believe me.”

Drake said the U.S. has been on the receiving end of promises by Mexico for 25 years and by other trading partners that they will protect workers, enforce domestic laws and provide workers with legitimate opportunities to organize, Drake said. “The fact is they haven’t.”

After endorsing Hillary Clinton’s bid for the presidency during the last election cycle, AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka said on Fox Business on Election Day in 2016 that a NAFTA renegotiation under a Clinton administration would involve organized labor having a seat at the negotiating table, an approach to NAFTA he said he would support.

A report of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative’s Labor Advisory Committee on Trade Negotiations and Trade Policy at the end of the negotiation noted the Trump administration’s level of engagement with organized labor was an improvement over prior trade agreement negotiations, but criticized the fact that the talks took place behind closed doors.

Barcena said Mexican labor reform legislation expected to pass Mexico’s Congress this week will ensure enforcement of USMCA labor provisions by Mexican domestic bodies, including independent labor courts, as well as labor boards that would resolve disputes and register contracts between workers and companies.

“If there is a violation of the labor laws in Mexico, workers can go to the labor courts and they have a speedy procedure,” she said. “What else do you want for enforcement? What can you ask a country internally to do if you have those enforcements in place?”
The lower house of Mexico’s Congress has approved the labor reform legislation, and the Mexican Senate is expected to approve it later this week, Barcena said.

“There will be free unions and we will ensure union leadership is overhauled,” she said.
Mexico currently has a system of “protection unions,” unions that are company controlled. Barcena said the labor reform legislation would dismantle this system.

The Mexican government is working on a road map to implement the labor legislation, and some of the institutions to be created by the legislation should be in place next year, she said.

After the legislation is passed, Mexico will have to review 700,000 protection contracts in four years, Barcena said.
“We are already preparing what kind of technical cooperation we can work with the U.S. authorities, and maybe with the help of [U.S.] labor unions themselves, because [they] may have more experience in certain areas,” she said. “The reviewing of the contracts will be of extreme importance. It will be very relevant and would hope to have the collaboration of the labor movement in the U.S.”

Trumka on Tuesday said he opposes ratification of USMCA because he doubts Mexico will enforce labor reforms required by the pact, noting that he wants to see Mexico’s ability to amend the 700,000 protection contracts in the four-year time span required by the agreement, AFP reported.

Wait times at the ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border have soared as the Trump administration diverts officers to handle an influx of immigrants, leaving trucks backed up for hours and industry leaders warning of possible produce shortages and supply-chain interruptions.

The clogged checkpoints are frustrating bankers, business leaders, local residents and even Mexico’s foreign minister, who called the reassignment of hundreds of border officers to other parts of the nearly 2,000-mile boundary a “very bad idea.” The shift in enforcement efforts is overwhelming legal checkpoints and impeding the free flow of goods and services, in some cases increasing wait times about fivefold.

Executives described the scene at the southern boundary as a slow-motion facsimile of the border closure that President Trump threatened two weeks ago before backing down amid protests that shutting down the border would hurt the economy. Trump said he would consider closing the border as a punitive measure if Mexico doesn’t take steps to reduce the flow of migrants to the United States within the next year.

Those now suffering the most because of backlogs at understaffed ports of entry are automakers, technology companies and farmers, who say that the slowdown is affecting the $1.7 billion-a-day in goods that crosses the border between the United States and Mexico. Delays at ports in Texas have at times exceeded 10 hours in recent days.

“This is a big, big cost and problem for companies, on top of everything else they’re dealing with,” said Rufus Yerxa, president of the National Foreign Trade Council. “It’s just more uncertainty and more pain.”

On Monday, cargo trucks waited up to two hours to cross the bridge from Mexico into Brownsville, Tex., a city that had no delays at this time last year. On El Paso’s Bridge of the Americas, cars and SUVs idled for 160 minutes, up from 45 minutes a year ago. Southern California’s Otay Mesa cargo processing section took 270 minutes to push trucks through its crossing this week, up from 50 minutes last year.

The lengthy delays are rippling through supply chains, resulting in higher costs and production disruptions. Because the wait times have grown so large, some companies are adding a second driver to their trucks because of government regulations limiting the number of hours a driver can work without resting.

The streets around the Otay Mesa commercial crossing into San Diego were filled with bored and frustrated truckers.

Juan Macareno, a truck driver from Ensenada, Mexico, said he has waited as long as six to eight hours to clear the border checkpoints during the past two weeks, up from the usual two hours. On Wednesday, he chatted on the phone and scrolled through his WhatsApp messages as traffic inched along.

“Just waiting,” he said, after driving a produce-filled truck into California. “You have nothing to do.”

Drivers say they are taking fewer routes, and others have been forced to stay overnight at some checkpoints because there aren’t enough officers to process the long lines of trucks.

Homeland Security officials say they are not intentionally slowing down processing times, but they acknowledge the frustrations the long lines have produced are helping them convey the severity of the border crisis.

With 545 Customs and Border Protection officers reassigned to help the Border Patrol, a negative impact on travel times and cargo inspections is inevitable, one DHS official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer candid views.

“Our intention is not to slow down commerce, it’s to provide some relief to what’s going on at the border,” the official said.

Border Patrol officials have repeatedly warned that immigration holding cells are jammed beyond capacity, with 10,000 to 13,000 in custody, creating dangerous and unsanitary conditions for migrants and officers. Authorities have said they are overwhelmed at the border and need more detention beds, officers and judicial support to process the rush of migrants.

Some executives worry that if short staffing at the border checkpoints causes delays to continue, Mexico could retaliate by slowing southbound traffic. In a rare rebuke of U.S. immigration policy Wednesday, Mexico’s Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard tweeted that the border slowdown is “creating costs . . . for both Mexico and the United States.”

High-level officials and business leaders are expected to discuss the delays Thursday and Friday at the U.S.-Mexico CEO Dialogue in Merida, a meeting held twice a year.

The slowdowns at the border have come as the Department of Homeland Security has faced political upheaval amid a record surge of migrants that included apprehensions topping 100,000 last month. The crossings have infuriated the president, leading to the ouster of DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who officially resigned effective Wednesday, days after Trump rescinded the nomination of her top immigration enforcement deputy, Ronald Vitiello. He announced his resignation Wednesday. The next acting commissioner of CBP will be John Sanders, the agency’s chief operating officer, a DHS official said Wednesday.

CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan, who ran the agency that apprehends migrants at the border and screens cars and trucks passing through legal checkpoints, took over as acting DHS secretary on Wednesday. McAleenan takes over as the Trump administration seeks a solution for what it considers an illegal migration crisis but also as officers struggle to maintain order over legal trade at the border.

In an informal survey by the Original Equipment Suppliers Association, 42 percent of its members reported suffering delays in their shipments from Mexico to the United States. Of those companies, two-thirds said the delays reached seven to 12 hours, according to Julie Fream, the group’s president.

The association’s members, which include companies such as Johnson Controls, Eaton and Tenneco, produce original equipment for automobiles.

Automakers are perhaps the most vulnerable to a prolonged border slowdown. The industry sends half-finished cars back and forth across the southern border multiple times and relies on Mexican factories to produce critical parts, such as the wire harnesses that organize a vehicle’s electrical cables. Continued disruption of shipping could soon interrupt production at American factories.

“That’s the concern,” said Neil Bradley, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “We’re getting closer to that point.”

Companies already are preparing to reroute cargo. Just one more day of backlogs would be enough for one-third of those responding to the survey to switch cargoes from trucks to airfreight, Fream said.

“All of those asked said they would seek alternatives if the delays continue for a week,” Fream said. “These alternatives are very costly.”

The Port of Nogales, Ariz., a chronically understaffed major crossing point for fresh fruit and vegetables, was slated to receive an extra 75 border agents. But those agents have been redeployed to cope with the migrant surge, according to Lance Jungmeyer, president of the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas.

“This is the new normal until they solve the problem at the border,” he said Wednesday.

Though delays in Nogales are not as severe as in Texas, they come after years of improvement in processing time. When Jungmeyer started working in Nogales in 2010, customs waits sometimes stretched to seven hours. Before the current staffing crunch, typical truck processing times were one hour or less, he said.

In an April 4 conference call, CBP officials told shippers they should expect delays to persist “for the foreseeable future.”

If the migration surge continues for 30 more days — as it is predicted to do — the agency plans to strip some agents from airport posts to further reinforce the border deployment, Jungmeyer said he was told. Beyond that, agents will be taken from the northern ports of entry with Canada and shifted to the border.

Jungmeyer said shifting resources away from the ports comes with costs that go beyond shipping delays: “We’re only making our ports of entry less secure. We’re encouraging bad players to take advantage of the ports of entry. We need to get customs officers back on line at the ports.”

U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Tex.) on Wednesday urged an effort to reduce the wait times at the border, calling on the Trump administration to “listen to the countless industries that rely on cross-border trade.”

The Texas International Produce Association asked McAleenan to dispatch officers and agents from the northern U.S. border and seaports to reduce delays. Their members report that wait times to cross the border have risen from 30 minutes to four-and-a-half hours.

“We haven’t seen issues like this in probably six years,” said Dante Galeazzi, CEO and president of the association, adding that the group is warning supermarkets and restaurants to expect delays and possibly shortages of avocados, mangoes, limes and other goods. “Obviously we think it’s a bad thing.”

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Wednesday that talks with White House senior adviser Jared Kushner have led to advances toward an agreement that would have the U.S. government guarantee some $10 billion in development investments for Mexico and Central America.

The previously discussed investments would aim to reduce immigration from Mexico and Central America by providing more opportunities in those countries. Roughly half of the sum would go to Mexico while the remainder would be divided among Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, Lopez Obrador said.

“That is investment to create jobs so that the people don’t have the need to abandon their communities, their families, their regions, their customs, their culture,” he said. “That is the dream that we want to convert into a reality.”

He said they were nearing an agreement and that he would consider traveling to the U.S. if there is a solid accord to sign.

Mexico has been under pressure from the U.S. to address the flow of Central American immigrants through the country. Several migrant caravans have drawn the ire of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Mexico has stepped up its offering of visas that would allow Central Americans to stay and work in Mexico and also agreed to a U.S. program that forces some who seek asylum in the U.S. to wait in Mexico while their cases are processed.

Some have criticized Mexico for efforts to slow the migration flow to the U.S. even while Trump continues to demand funding to extend a barrier along the entire U.S.-Mexico border.

Lopez Obrador, a leftist, had campaigned on the idea of improving economic and security conditions in Mexico sufficiently so that Mexicans would not have to migrate.

“We have the conviction that with the programs that are being implemented in our country there is going to be zero migration of Mexicans,” he said Wednesday. “Mexicans aren’t going to need to go to work in the United States because there is going to be work.”

Lopez Obrador and Trump’s son-in-law dined Tuesday in the Mexico City home of Bernardo Gomez, co-executive president of Grupo Televisa.

Lopez Obrador said there is a “very good relationship with the U.S. government.”

The civil relationship between Lopez Obrador and Trump has surprised some who expected the two strong personalities to clash. Lopez Obrador’s predecessor Enrique Pena Nieto was harshly criticized for not standing up more strongly to Trump’s verbal attacks on Mexico and one of his final acts as president was giving Kushner the Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest honor the country gives to foreigners.

But Lopez Obrador has been careful to maintain a relationship of “mutual respect” and members of his Cabinet were involved in the renegotiation of the free trade agreement before he had even taken office.

The Mexican leader said he and Kushner also discussed the pending ratification of the new trade agreement, dubbed the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

Mexico’s Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard and John Creamer, the charge d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy, also attended the dinner.