As talks regarding the reexamination of the North American Free Trade Agreement continue, we want to know:
How has Mexico influenced the United States economically?
Mexico has played a significant role in the rapid expansion of US exports in the 1990s and 2000s. Mexico has alternated between being the second and third most important trade partner of the United States in the past decade. In 2014, the United States exported a total of $240 billion worth of goods to Mexico, the most important of these products coming from the computers and electronics, transportation, petroleum, and machinery sectors. Exports to Mexico accounted for approximately 1,344,000 jobs in the United States in 2014.
Mexico also influences the US economy through tourism in the same way that US tourists play a central role in Mexico’s economy. In 2014, fully seventy-five million foreigners visited the United States, generating $221 billion. Canada accounts for the largest number of visitors each year, followed by Mexico, whose seventeen million tourists in 2014 spent $19 billion. Along the border, at the end of the decade, Mexican visitors generated some $8 billion to $9 billion in sales and supported approximately 150,000 jobs.
[Page 59-60, Mexico: What Everyone Needs to Know, Second Edition by Roderic Ai Camp]
Images: 1) Connect by PublicDomainImages. 2) American Flag by isakarakus. 3) Mexican Flag by Clker-Free-Vector-Images. All CC0 public domain via Pixabay.
