For years, globalization was understood as a game of efficiency that invited producing where it was cheapest, assembling where it was most convenient, and selling where there was demand. Today, that model no longer describes the world. It is enough to observe the Strait of Hormuz to understand that geopolitics never disappeared, it had only been diluted momentarily.
Since the pandemic, economic competition has been transformed into a competition for capabilities, resilience, and control of complete productive systems among regions. On this new board, China has gained ground and little by little has consolidated a dominant position in sectors that will define the economy of the future.
This advance is the result of a sustained industrial policy, focused on integrating value chains and ensuring access to critical inputs. The result is a structural advantage in areas ranging from renewable energies to the key components for electrification and digital infrastructure.
The challenge of the fragmented regional vision
Faced with competition among regional blocs and increasingly protected supply chains, the United States and Mexico face the challenge of a fragmented regional vision. The United States maintains leadership in innovation and financing; Mexico has consolidated itself as a highly integrated manufacturing platform.
However, the relationship continues to operate under a logic of commercial integration rather than as a shared industrial strategy.
To build a regional bloc that functions as an articulated system, it is essential to connect the research and development capacities of the United States with manufacturing and scaling in Mexico. The energy transition and the expansion of digital infrastructure make this challenge even more urgent.
Demand driven by Artificial Intelligence, data centers, and clean technologies is accelerating, and currently a large part of that capacity is concentrated in China.
From dependence to regional competitiveness
Building a more competitive regional bloc implies concrete decisions: coordinating industrial policies, aligning incentives, and investing in energy and logistics infrastructure. It also requires a shared vision on priority sectors, from advanced manufacturing to critical minerals. Time is a determining factor; industrial advantages can be lost quickly when other actors consolidate scale and dominate markets.
What today is an opportunity can become a structural lag if action is not taken quickly. North America does not need to build from scratch; it has the basis of the USMCA, but these mechanisms have been strategically underused.
The United States and Mexico have the possibility of redefining their role in the global economy, not from internal competition, but from the construction of a regional platform capable of competing and innovating.
In this new stage, competitiveness will not be individual. It will necessarily be regional.
This article was originally published by La Prensa OEM.
Date: April 17, 2026
Link: https://oem.com.mx/la-prensa/analisis/opinion-por-paul-sanchez-estados-unidos-y-mexico-hacia-un-bloque-regional-mas-competitivo-29602147 [Online]