Globalization and the Scrambling Process of Catching Up in Mexico

In the last 50 years, Mexico’s manufacturing growth has been fostered, although its competitiveness has relied on the low wage paradigm. In this article, the country’s immersion in globalization is analyzed, thereby departing from the effects derived by the oil crisis that forced the country to leave the trap of natural resources to generate productive value chains through the economic opening boosted by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and subsequently, by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Such economic opening allowed the development of global value chains through original equipment manufacturing in the automotive, electronics, pharmaceutical, and medical devices industries. However, this process has been characterized by low investment coefficients and scarce innovation compared with Korea, Malaysia and China, due to the lack of an institutional framework that could have promoted innovation to allow the country to overcome the middle-income trap.