Back

COMEXI-PCNS webinar series 2024: Nearshoring boom: lessons from Mexico and Morocco

May 30, 2024
Related topics: 

Nearshoring in Mexico

Nearshoring in Mexico presents both importance and challenges for businesses. The country's proximity to the United States, its largest trading partner, offers strategic advantages such as reduced transportation costs and shorter lead times, making it an attractive destination for nearshoring operations. Additionally, Mexico boasts a skilled labor force, particularly in industries like automotive, aerospace, and electronics manufacturing, which align well with the needs of many nearshoring companies. Moreover, Mexico benefits from trade agreements like the USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement), providing preferential access to key markets. However, nearshoring in Mexico also faces challenges, including security concerns in certain regions, bureaucratic hurdles, and regulatory complexities that may impede the ease of doing business. Infrastructure constraints, such as inadequate transportation networks and energy supply, can increase operational costs and pose logistical challenges for companies. Addressing these challenges while leveraging Mexico's strategic advantages is crucial for maximizing the potential of nearshoring in the country.

Nearshoring in Morocco

Nearshoring in Morocco is significant due to its proximity to Europe. This stability, coupled with developed infrastructure and efficient logistics, facilitates seamless operations and reduces investor uncertainties. It offers advantages like reduced transportation costs and access to a skilled workforce, particularly in the engineering and IT sectors. Trade agreements and government investments in infrastructure support nearshoring activities, making Morocco attractive for European companies to optimize their supply chains. The country's political stability, developed infrastructure, and efficient logistics bolster its appeal to investors. Macro factors such as trade openness and stable exchange rates further enhance its attractiveness. Moreover, Morocco boasts solid legal frameworks that prioritize and protect business rights and economic incentives, ensuring a stable and predictable business environment. However, challenges persist, including skill mismatches, technology transfer, and SME upgrading. Addressing these, alongside pressing concerns like achieving carbon neutrality and digitalizing the economy, is essential for Morocco to fully leverage its potential as a competitive nearshoring hub and sustain its appeal to foreign investors.

Importance of the webinar

In this context, the exchange of experiences and lessons learned between Mexico and Morocco is instrumental in bolstering their nearshoring opportunities and overcoming challenges in this domain. By sharing insights into their respective nearshoring endeavors, both countries can leverage each other's strengths and address common obstacles more effectively. Through collaboration and knowledge sharing, COMEXI and PCNS can contribute to identifying innovative solutions, actionable strategies, and the maximal capitalization of trends in the global nearshoring landscape. This exchange can also result in ideas that foster mutual growth and competitiveness in the nearshoring sector, that help drive economic development and create new opportunities for both nations.

RELATED CONTENT

  • Download PDF
    Ressources naturelles et réalités géopolitiques de l’Afrique
    Authors
    Abdelhak Bassou
    May 25, 2017
    Le forum de haut niveau de Tana sur la sécurité en Afrique (22-23 Avril, 2017, Bahir Dar, Ethiopie) a choisi pour thème à sa 6e édition la question de la gouvernance des ressources naturelles en Afrique. L’une des sessions du forum avait cherché à « comprendre et à expliquer pourquoi l’exploitation de ces ressources est de plus en plus source de tension et de violence qui ont des répercussions dramatiques sur la paix et la stabilité sur le continent ». Lors des différentes intervent ...
  • Download PDF
    Africa’s natural resources and geopolitical realities
    Authors
    Abdelhak Bassou
    May 25, 2017
    For its 6th edition, the Tana High-Level Forum on Security in Africa, held in Bahir Dar on Lake Tana in Ethiopia from April 22 to 23, 2017, focused on the theme of Natural Resource Governance in Africa. One of the forum session’s key discussion points sought to "understand and explain why the exploitation of these resources is increasingly a source of tension and violence, which have dramatic repercussions on the continent’s peace and stability." During the various events throughout ...
  • Download PDF
    The Future of Globalization
    Authors
    Uri Dadush
    May 22, 2017
    Despite the threat posed by right-wing nationalism, left wing populism, and protectionism, this is not the end of globalization. The most likely scenario is a continuation of globalization at a rate like that of the last ten years and perhaps even acceleration as the world catches up on lost time in the wake of the financial crisis and its many aftershocks. However, in recent years a formidable resistance to globalization has arisen, and the risk of a sharp and temporary slowdown in ...
  • Trade Backlash and the World Trade Organization
    Authors
    Uri Dadush
    May 22, 2017
    The best way I can describe my feelings about trade these days is as an unstable anxiety disorder. Following on November 8 2016, the date of the US election, my anxiety level rose markedly as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was buried. Shortly thereafter it touched a maximum when a dangerous idea called the Border Adjustment Tax was gaining traction, and the North-American Free Trade Agreement seemed headed the way of TPP. Then I became a little less prone to panic attacks, as v ...
  • Nafta at the Crossroads
    Authors
    Otaviano Canuto
    Michael McKeon
    May 22, 2017
    The U.S. Senate voted to confirm Robert Lighthizer as United States Trade Representative last week, rounding out President Donald Trump’s cabinet and giving momentum to his trade agenda. At his swearing-in ceremony on May 15, Ambassador Lighthizer predicted that President Trump would permanently reverse “the dangerous trajectory of American trade,” and in turn make “U.S. farmers, ranchers and workers richer and the country safer.” This policy shift will begin in earnest in the comin ...
  • Download PDF
    U.S. Economic Policy Toward Africa: The Path to More Collaboration
    Authors
    Eliot Pence
    May 19, 2017
    U.S. Africa policy has tended to shift over time and has lacked a clear overarching strategic vision. The Trump administration’s approach in Africa should articulate a limited set of principles that clarifies and solidifies a more sustainable framework that is better suited to address fundamental drivers of Africa’s future. These principles include prioritizing key countries and rationalizing resources, creating an “Investment- First” policy in Africa, and more clearly communicating ...
  • Download PDF
    Europe in North Africa: Fighting Short-Termism
    Authors
    Tobias Borck
    May 17, 2017
    Europe and North Africa are bound in a strategic relationship. The stability, security and prosperity of both regions are inextricably linked. European countries - both individually and collectively (inside and outside the framework of the European Union) - have to develop a more strategic approach to their southern neighbourhood in order to overcome the current migration crisis, work with the North African states to counter violent extremism, and make the most of the many economic ...