Desindustrialización prematura en México: análisis a nivel desagregado y el efecto de la apertura comercial

The aims of this paper are, on the one hand, to investigate the evolution of premature deindustrialization in the Mexican economy at a disaggregated level between 1994 and 2019; and, on the other, to explore how trade openness—by using international fragmentation and the increasing Chinese trade participation at the local and international levels as explanatory variables—has affected this phenomenon. The disaggregated evidence indicates that deindustrialization within the manufacturing sector is a heterogeneous phenomenon; that is, there is a group of industries that do not deindustrialize and, at the same time, another group that does. On the other hand, panel estimation results from 2003 to 2019, with various estimators, indicate that the effect of trade openness has been positive for the group of industries that do not deindustrialize, particularly due to external demand, while for the deindustrializing industries, whose destination is the domestic market, the effect is negative, mainly due to increasing Chinese imports. The policy recommendation derived from the findings is: to avoid further deindustrialization, import substitution measures and production, linkages are required.