Foreign investment in North America tells a surprising story

about who’s really betting on the continent.

Last month, Latinometrics was in Mexico City for the North Capital Forum, which brought together business leaders, diplomats, policymakers, analysts and much more to discuss the future of North American integration.

Latinometrics Chief Editor  moderated a panel entitled Data for Decision-Making which featured a round-table discussion with business leaders from AT&T, GBM, ANPACT, Tule Capital, and Cabrera Capital Markets.

As part of this panel, Latinometrics prepared a number of charts to drive discussion.  

North America is home to the two largest trade relationships worldwide, led by the $800B US-Mexican commercial relationship.

And perhaps no sector better encapsulates this relationship than the automotive industry, which has become a symbol of sorts for North American integration.

To Rogelio Arzate, executive president of Mexican heavy-vehicle association Asociación Nacional de Productores de Autobuses, Camiones y Tractocamiones, A.C. (ANPACT), this industry is facing two main red flags:

A lack of supply chain synchronization across borders, and low credit access to other technologies.

Yet, as Arzate highlights, the sharing of data and growing local content supplies (over Asian imports) offers huge potential for strengthening auto growth.

The latter of these two points, on local content requirements, is how the car industry and others hope to avoid soaring US tariffs.

By ensuring compliance with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which is due for renegotiation next year, businesses can steer clear of painful trade barriers.

The important thing is getting all sides to recognize the importance.

The USMCA is critical even when domestic politics pretend otherwise, as highlighted by CCM founder and CEO Martin Cabrera:

“The US needs Canada and it needs Mexico to be competitive.

Next year’s renegotiation is about really going in there, getting it done quickly, so we can move forward and continue the growth in all three countries.”

Of course, not all countries have equal leverage.

Mexico is no doubt the country most exposed to the US worldwide, given 80% of its exports head north each year, so tariffs are almost uniquely dangerous. Given this, we asked Miriam Acuña, chief economist at GBM, how markets had evaluated Mexico’s performance vis-à-vis trade tensions.

Acuña noted that investors have tended to reward Mexico’s government for its smooth handling of both domestic and foreign economic matters, as evidenced by the peso’s 10% appreciation this year.

 Think Latin America only receives investment?

Think again… let’s explore ↓

Every month, in these weekday stories as well as in the pages of the Domingo Brief, we track some of the major investments being made by the world’s largest transnational corporations in Latin America.

Whether carmakers’ big Mexican moves or Telefonica’s recent Andean divestments, we try to ensure you’re up to date on all of the ways in which foreign direct investment (FDI) is powering the region’s economic success stories.

But don’t think for one second that Latin America is merely an investment destination.

Nowadays, led by industry leaders across diverse sectors, regional firms are actually investing abroad.

And while you may not be surprised by the largest Latin American investor…we bet you’ll be surprised by the second-largest.

Yes, while Brazil tops the investor ranking list with nearly $20B in average annual outflows since 2019, Chile is the true success story of Latin America.

The region’s fifth-largest economy has averaged over half of Brazil’s outflows, in the process outpacing larger markets like Argentina, Colombia, and especially Mexico.

A few factors explain this.

To start, Chile’s long history of macroeconomic and political stability have contributed to the country’s economic development, especially relative to the rest of the region.

Neighbors like Argentina or Bolivia have struggled with fiscal discipline or robust legal frameworks, causing decades of lost progress owing to economic volatility and polarization.

Venezuela’s collapse created the worst migration crisis in the Americas, and Colombia absorbed nearly half of 7 million refugees...

Here’s the story ↓

A quarter of a century ago, the idea of millions of people moving to Colombia would no doubt have raised eyebrows.

It was a Colombia recovering from the narco-violence of the early 1990s and still facing both government corruption and FARC-related guerrilla violence.

A Colombia that had seen millions of its own citizens emigrate, especially to the United States, Spain and Venezuela.

In a tragic ironic twist, the last of these countries changed everything for Colombia, a decade ago.

With Venezuela’s descent into economic devastation and government repression under the regime of autocrat Nicolas Maduro, the country has entered the worst migration crisis in the Americas.

Approximately 7M citizens of the Bolivarian Republic have fled abroad in search of work, stability and freedom: a mass exodus largely unparalleled in contemporary peacetime.

Unsurprisingly, nearly half of them have gone to neighboring Colombia, making the country the top destination for migrants in Latin America.

So what happens when the exodus is suddenly reversed?

Like most refugees, most Venezuelans would like to return home when they can. However, its current situation has forced countries in the region to adapt.

For Colombia, a country of just 50M people, the millions of newcomers have implied the need to be proactive.

The Colombian government has established a program to grant legal residency and formalization to Venezuelan migrants, hoping to avoid the kind of administrative and regulatory problems that undocumented immigrants face.

While hosting such a dramatically large immigrant population in a developing country comes with serious challenges, many in Colombia point to the somewhat poetic irony of the situation.

 Energy Grid

Brazil’s 90% green grid and Paraguay’s hydro-power leadership

show LatAm outpaces the US and Europe.