Polish President Andrzej Duda on Saturday starts an official visit to Mexico.

Along comes a score of Polish companies interested in increasing their footprint in Latin America. The five-day mission will include a Polish-Mexican Business Forum and meetings with local companies in Mexico City.
Poland eyes the country as an emerging regional power which may soon join the group of the world’s biggest economies.
Mexico now ranks 11th in the world in GDP-based standings and is expected to become the world’s fifth biggest economy by mid-21st century. The mission to the country is led by the Polish Agency for Investment and Trade (PAIH).
“This is a very important, historic visit to Mexico by our president and we are taking advantage of it to bring the Mexican market closer to Polish companies willing to expand their business overseas,” PAIH vice president Krzysztof Senger told our reporter Michał Owczarek.

Mexico’s top trade negotiator said he was heartened by a retreat from more protectionist rhetoric in the U.S. and that talks to redo the North American Free Trade Agreement may conclude as soon as January.

Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said the January date would depend on the administration of President Donald Trump notifying Congress in time for negotiations to begin by the end of July.

“The U.S. has to trigger the mechanism,” Guajardo said in an interview with Bloomberg TV’s Erik Schatzker in Buenos Aires. “What I keep hearing is that after Congress comes back from recess, they will be able to be notified by the end of April.” In that case talks can start by the end of July, followed by “six months of negotiations, and then we send it to the legislative branch for them to approve it.”

Investors have shed their doomsday outlook on Mexico in recent weeks after White House officials repeatedly said that both Mexico and the U.S. stand to benefit from a renegotiation of Nafta. The peso has rebounded from a record low in January and is now the best performer of all currencies tracked by Bloomberg, and companies that had put investments on hold as then-candidate Trump railed against Nafta are racing back into the country.

“It will be in the best interest of both countries involved to make this process very efficient,” Guajardo said, noting that Mexico has presidential elections in mid-2018 and the U.S. has a midterm vote in November of next year.

Still, Guajardo warned that even minor changes may be difficult to negotiate. On one of those changes, raising the average percentage of auto inputs that must be made in the North American region to 70 percent from 62.5 percent seems reasonable, Guajardo said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum’s Latin America meeting in Buenos Aires. However, pushing it to 95 percent would be extreme and hurt the region’s competitiveness.

“Mexico will be willing to buy more from the U.S.,” Guajardo said. “We can make an additional effort as long as you have the supply process already in place to be able to supply in Mexico at a competitive cost.”

The Trump administration has softened its rhetoric notably from January, when then President-elect Trump tweeted that he’ll slap heavy taxes on businesses that move jobs to Mexico. Since then, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has said redoing Nafta could spell a win-win for both sides. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said he anticipates a sensible deal, and Peter Navarro, who leads the White House National Trade Council, said he wants Canada, Mexico and the U.S. to become a global manufacturing powerhouse.

Some of Trump’s early stumbles, such as the collapse of the health-care bill and court orders against two attempts at a travel ban have also underscored how hard it is to make any drastic changes in Washington.

For example, House Speaker Paul Ryan has been pushing to replace corporate income tax with a tax on businesses’ domestic sales and imports, exempting exports. The border adjustment tax proposal raised alarm bells among importers in the U.S., as well as government officials in Mexico as they feared it would reduce shipments north of the border. But support for the measure has waned in Washington.

That border tax may run the risk of violating principles of the World Trade Organization, and Mexico reserves the right to file a complaint against it, Guajardo said in the interview. In addition, if the U.S. reduces its corporate tax rate, the nation would have to rethink its own tax policy to keep being attractive for foreign investment.

A March 22 draft proposal to rework Nafta signed by acting U.S. Trade Representative Stephen Vaughn states that the U.S. will seek to give preference to domestic companies for government procurement while finding opportunities for U.S. companies to bid in Mexico and Canada procurement markets. While noting that the White House has backed away from the letter, Guajardo said that if the U.S. wants access to Mexico’s public purchases, it will have to give Mexico access to its own public purchases.

Trump must issue a formal 90-day notice of his intent to Congress to revisit Nafta, but the administration so far has been vague about what the U.S. will seek from Mexico and Canada in the talks. Ross said March 10 that the White House would give its notice to Congress within weeks, but it has yet to happen. Mexico has been lobbying for a swift renegotiation that could be concluded before the mid-2018 presidential elections.

Trump may bluster about keeping jobs in the U.S., but not many firms seem to be listening.

At first President Donald Trump’s biggest problem, at least when it came to his vows to keep American jobs from being sent to Mexico, is that he overstated both the magnitude of that particular problem and his own achievements in keepings jobs in this country.

Now, though, the problem is that companies are simply not intimidated by his populist rhetoric.

Companies like Illinois Tool Works Inc. in Mazon, Illinois; Triumph Group Inc. in Spokane, Washington; and TE Connectivity Ltd. in Pennsauken, New Jersey, are reducing the size of or outright closing plants in the United States to move to Mexico, according to a Bloomberg report.

Alan Russell, the CEO of a company in El Paso that helps relocations, told Bloomberg that “this isn’t about taking jobs from the U.S. It’s about saving companies.” Similarly Ross Baldwin, the CEO of a San Diego company that performs a similar service told Bloomberg that “there’s cautious optimism and a hopeful attitude that cooler heads will prevail in Washington.”

As Bloomberg also points out, manufacturing jobs in Mexico increased by 3.2 percent in January from where it was in that month in 2016, while they fell by 0.3 percent in the United States within that same period.

This isn’t to say that businesses are unconcerned with the potential impact of Trump’s policies. In particular, the prospect of Trump trying to renegotiate NAFTA and a plan by House Republicans to impose a 20 percent border adjustment tax could impact the bottom line of retailers like Wal-Mart. At the same time, it seems that many businesses are deciding that the cost-saving advantages of using cheap labor in Mexico may outweigh the negative PR caused by sending jobs out of the United States.

If Trump really wants to be remembered as the president who saved American jobs, he may need to do something that his administration has so far opposed on principle — create regulations on American businesses.

G

Grupo Mexico, a mining and rail conglomerate, is buying the Florida East Coast Railway Holdings Corp. for $2.1 billion under an agreement announced Tuesday.

The purchase will enable the Mexican company to expand its U.S. freight transport business on Florida East Coast Railway’s 351 miles of tracks stretching from Miami to Jacksonville. Grupo Mexico has existing rail operations in Texas.

The transaction will be financed by $350 million in Grupo Mexico funds and $1.75 billion in debt, according to Grupo Mexico.

The sale of Jacksonville-based FEC Railway, which is owned by Fortress Investment Group, will have no impact on the company’s other holdings — including the Brightline passenger train operation in South Florida.

The investment group also owns Florida East Coast Industries, the parent company of All Aboard Florida, developer and owner of the Brightlight passenger train system being built from Miami to West Palm Beach and Orlando.

“The sale of the Florida East Coast Railway does not impact Brightline,” said a spokeswoman, AnneMarie Mathews. “Brightline is a separate company that has dual ownership of the corridor and the right to operate passenger service.”

ACAPULCO, Mexico (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s push to force U.S. industry to bring jobs home is opening investment avenues for Chinese companies in Mexico, an executive with Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the country’s largest lender, said on Friday.

Fears of a hit to foreign investment ran high when Ford Motor Co canceled a $1.6 billion plant in Mexico’s central state of San Luis Potosi in January.

Trump, who had railed against U.S. manufacturers investing in Mexico, hailed the decision as a major victory, but Ford put it down to declining demand for small cars.

Yaogang Chen, head of ICBC’s Mexico unit, said U.S. industry’s loss could be China’s gain.

“If some U.S. investment projects don’t (happen), there has to be somebody to invest. … If Chinese companies think it is profitable, they will invest,” he said in an interview on the sidelines of a banking conference in the resort of Acapulco.

In February, China’s Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Group Co Ltd (JAC Motor) and Mexico’s Giant Motors, along with distributor Chori Co Ltd, said they would invest over $210 million in an existing plant to build SUVs in the central state of Hidalgo.

Prior to Trump’s campaign against U.S. manufacturers shipping jobs overseas, Chinese companies were making tentative inroads into Mexico.

China’s BAIC Motor Corp Ltd <1958.hk> in June 2016 started selling in Mexico its own cars imported from China and has said that it will look into building an industrial plant in Mexico to produce cars and electric vehicles.

BAIC is already a client of ICBC’s in Mexico.

ICBC, one of the world’s top banks by market capitalization and assets, received its banking license in Mexico in 2014 and started operations there in mid-2016.

“JAC, we think, will be a client of ours in Mexico too,” Chen said.

Still, Chinese foreign direct investment in Mexico is a tiny fraction of what U.S. firms have plowed in over the years.

State-controlled ICBC expects to grow its assets and loan portfolio in Mexico tenfold over the next three years to some 10 billion pesos ($533 million), Chen said.

The executive said ICBC aims to offer a service to allow clients to convert Mexican pesos to Chinese renminbi and vice versa, and make cross-border transactions cheaper.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico’s government on Tuesday warned Mexican companies that it would not be in their best “interests” to participate in the construction of U.S. President Donald Trump’s border wall, though there will be no legal restrictions or sanctions to stop them if they tried.

While some Mexican companies stand to potentially benefit from the controversial infrastructure project, residents south of the border view the wall and Trump’s repeated calls to have Mexico pay for it as offensive. That is putting public pressure on firms to abstain from participating.

“We’re not going to have laws to restrict (companies), but I believe considering your reputation it would undoubtedly be in your interest to not participate in the construction of the wall,” said Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo.

“There won’t be a law with sanctions, but Mexicans and Mexican consumers will know how to value those companies that are loyal to our national identity and those that are not,” Guajardo added.

His comments echo those of Mexico’s foreign minister Luis Videgaray, who said on Friday that Mexican companies that see a business opportunity in the wall should “check their conscience” first.

Mexico’s Cemex , one of the world’s largest cement producers, has said it is open to providing quotes to supply the raw materials for the border wall. Competitor Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua has also signaled a readiness to work on the project.

Both companies have a strong presence in the United States.

Commenting on a media report published last week that stated Cemex will not participate in construction of the border wall, company spokesman Jorge Perez told Reuters: “I confirmed that we will not participate in the bidding process. That is all we have said.”

Asked if Cemex would be willing to provide raw materials, such as cement, to the companies eventually selected to build the wall, Perez said he could not comment.

The only Mexican company, out of some 720 in total, to put its name down on the U.S. government’s website for business opportunities as an interested vendor for the wall construction, is a small, four-member concern from the central city of Puebla that wants to provide LED lights that it imports mostly from China.

Mexican activists have called on consumers and local government officials to boycott that company, Ecovelocity.

Italian oil company Eni has discovered “meaningful” reserves of oil off the coast of Mexico after drilling the first well by an international oil company since Mexico opened up its long closed oil sector to private investment under a 2013 reform. The …and more »
Eni hits oil in first offshore Mexico well – Financial Times

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross thinks a minimum wage hike is important — for workers in Mexico.

In a television interview Friday, he argued that one of the problems with NAFTA is that the minimum wage in Mexico hasn’t climbed as fast as it should.

“The theory of NAFTA had been [there would be a] gradual convergence of living standards between Mexico and the United States,” he said on CNBC. “That really hasn’t happened on the Mexican side. The minimum wage…has barely gone up in peso terms.”

That means that employers can still find significantly cheaper labor in Mexico. It also means that Mexican workers don’t have the money to buy higher-priced U.S.-made goods.

He made a similar point at his confirmation hearing. “The minimum wage in Mexico has barely changed in pesos for quite a few years. And the peso has depreciated quite a lot against the dollar,” he told senators. “So on a purchasing power basis, the average Mexican worker is far worse off than he or she was five or 10 years ago. That was not the original intent of NAFTA.”
Ross is wrong when he says that the Mexican minimum wage has “barely gone up in peso terms.” The Mexican minimum wage has increased 11 times since 2009, rising by about 50%. The U.S. minimum wage has not increased since 2009.
But even with all those increases, the Mexican minimum wage is a fraction of the U.S. minimum wage. Workers there must be paid at least 80 pesos a day, which works out to only about $4. The U.S. minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, or $58 for an 8-hour day.
Ross wasn’t asked on either occasion what he thought about the campaign to raise the minimum wage in the U.S. But in the past the billionaire secretary has opposed the idea. He argued that a higher minimum wage would hurt workers because they will be replaced by robots and automation.

“They ought to be running ads against the minimum wage increases saying ‘Only robots want the higher minimum wage,'” he told Fox Business in November 2015.
The Commerce department did not respond to a request for comment from Ross on the U.S. or Mexican minimum wages
During Trump’s campaign, he was all over the place on his minimum wage views. At one point he said it was “too high,” then he said he would support raising it to $10 an hour.
The U.S. minimum wage workers in the U.S. have also lost ground due to inflation. The U.S. minimum would need to be $8.21 an hour today to the same purchasing power that the $7.25 minimum wage had in 2009, the last time the U.S. minimum wage increased.

APM Terminals Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico’s largest semi-automated terminal, received its first official vessel call today with the arrival of the 9,600 TEU capacity Maersk Salalah on the AC2 Transpacific service from Asia.

“This is a milestone as we add an additional operational terminal to our portfolio. A priority for us is to transition terminals under implementation into operation, and make them as efficient as possible to support our customers.” said Morten H. Engelstoft, CEO of APM Terminals.

“We have a significant portfolio across Latin America, and this will be our second terminal in Mexico after Yucatan. We are pleased to be a contributor in helping Mexico to reach its growth ambitions,” Morten added.

APM Terminals Lazaro Cardenas is state-of-the-art with semi-automated processes that are geared toward delivering higher productivity and availability for clients as well as contributing to Mexican trade growth by offering a new gateway for commerce between the second-largest economy in Latin America and the rest of the world.

“Mexico is a core part of our strategy of investing in growth markets and building stateof-the-art facilities to run more efficiently the supply chain from the heart of Mexico to Asia and the rest of the Americas,” says Jose Rueda, Managing Director for APM Terminals in Mexico.

“The technology in this terminal will bring increased predictability and efficiency to our shipping line customers, whilst ensuring the highest levels of safety for our employees and supply chain partners.” he adds.

“In addition to servicing ships, the new terminal in Lazaro Cardenas will enable us to further contribute to the nation’s growth story and long-term competitiveness by offering efficient, safe and reliable terminal services to producers and manufacturers. With the capacity to receive the world’s biggest ships and provide additional connectivity inland via our terminal at Cuautitlan Izcalli, in the industrial zone of Mexico City which is surrounded by over 200 onward distribution centers, we are in a unique position to facilitate trade for the country,” says Rueda.

With the first phase of the terminal complete, APM Terminals Lazaro Cardenas occupies an area of 49 hectares, with a quay of 750 meters in length for ships and a depth of 16.5m, deep enough to receive some of the world’s largest ships. The terminal is connected to five rail tracks and offers gate services for land-side customers.

By the final phase of the terminal buildout, which is scheduled to happen between 2027 and 2030, the terminal’s water depth will increase to 18m.

By then, the terminal will have a quay 1.5 km long in a total area of 102 hectares and a capacity of 4.1 million TEUs, operated by 15 STS cranes and 10 rail tracks, providing intermodal access. By the final phase, the total investment cost will come to US$900 million.

Mexico handles Latin America’s third largest container volume, behind only Brazil and Panama.