Mexico is now the 12th largest economy in the world | Hacker News Reader

Mexico is now the 12th largest economy in the world

mexiconewsdaily.com

105 pointseatonphil92 comments

Demographics-wise it makes sense that Mexico passed South Korea and Australia. And long-term it's projected Mexico will get up to 7th place by 2050.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/these-will-be-th...

Healthiest demographics of any major nation on earth. Mexico will be fundamental to North American security, stability, and prosperity through the 21st century.

Stability? Perhaps some day. Violence and instability make Mexico a risky place to invest. But Laredo TX now is the largest port in the United States

When? Mexico doesn't even control all its own territory: a lot of it is controlled by narco cartels.

Nothing the US military can’t fix (or make things worse?) when the time comes. If the cartels get in the way of making money through industry they will be taken down a few notches.

The US military would be unable to defeat the cartels. The US military is designed to fight standing armies, not criminal organizations or insurgencies. Any plausible solution to the cartel issue will take a long time to implement and require some unpalatable choices. For example: indefinite suspension of legal rights and due process for all military age males; arbitrary arrests and detention; mass amnesties; legalization; curfews; invasive government surveillance.

The El Salvadoran military defeated their local chapters. Though you are right about the necessity of suspending due process in cartel-controlled regions.

Same military that defeated taliban?

Likely to be faster given Chinese EV companies are starting factories, which will help Mexico to transition their already strong ICE economy to the new era

Mexico has some of the most arable land on the planet too. They are going to become a serious economic superpower by the end of the century, esp if they sort out their cartel problem.

How does one invest in this to ride the wave?

There's the VMEX etf if that's the kind of thing you're looking for

I'm not sure about this symbol. It can't be found at all on Schwab or Fidelity's websites, and Yahoo Finance only has "VMEX19.MX" with no historical information.

The only mainstream ETF that I'm aware of for Mexico is BlackRock's EWW. I held that for a little while this past year, and wish that I had held far longer since it blew the doors off the S&P 500's returns.

However, I would only recommend putting a little play money in an investment like this. Not shifting your entire retirement savings into it. An investment in Mexico is really more of a short-term forex play than a matter of where the Mexican economy may or may not be several decades from now. Economically, Mexico is very much a vassal state of the USA. If things go badly enough for the U.S. economy to fall behind, then odds are Mexico would be heavily impacted by those circumstances directly or indirectly.

Very dubious list. Russia and Brazil in the top ten? Highly unlikely. I wouldn’t trust any of these projections in the slightest.

Brazil has been the biggest economy in Latin America for decades, what cave have you been living in?

Look at fertility. These projections make no sense without considering TFR and growth through immigration.

~ https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location...

I can't fathom why you think a country like Russia doesn't have a powerful economy.

Not just Russia, there are many countries most westerners know nothing about that have more money than one would have expected.

> there are many countries most westerners

Maybe this is meant in a way that makes sense, but what do you mean westerners specifically? Our maps include the same countries as people "from the east of us" (whatever that means on a globe), and we all can consult global statistics. Am I missing something obvious?

Brazil has a large and heavily industrialized economy. It is however radically unequal (even by US terms) which may be why you think the country is poor as a whole. With a GDP of $2 trillion USD the Brazilian economy is comparable to Spain or Korea in size.

There are cities in Brazil that are relatively utopian compared to a lot of US cities. It’s not all Rio, but some people think it is.

I'm curious what do you mean by "utopian" and could you give some examples?

Check out Curitiba. It’s a beautiful clean city with very low crime and great public transportation. It’s more like Mountain View or Ann Arbor than Chicago or New Orleans. Compared to a city like Memphis or St Louis, it’s relatively utopian. It’s a .856 on the Human Development Index, which puts many US cities to shame.

Brazil? It’s a massive economy. Do you get your news from memes?

Look at fertility. These projections make no sense without considering TFR and growth through immigration.

~ https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location...

Are you aware that brazil is the 9th largest economy in the world? Slightly above canada

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(no...

Look at fertility. These projections make no sense without considering TFR and growth through immigration.

~ https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location...

Why? Both countries are top 10 in pop and area. Only makes sense.

Quite a few LatAm countries had leading GDP (GNPs back then) a century or so ago, but mismanagement, endemic corruption, poor education, and a different attitude toward time management led them down a different path. It didn’t have to be that way.

They can pull themselves up like Salvador is doing, or they can be eternal victims like Cuba and have the Yankees as a convenient scapegoat (that’s not saying US meddling didn’t stunt growth), but Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Singapore all prove that a government and a people who focus and stop blaming others for their state of affairs can achieve wild dreams. Finding blame, even when there is lots to go around isn’t productive for an individual or a people.

This is a lesson for Ukraine too. One day when the war is over, they’ll have to make a choice, blame Russia for their ills or get over it and begin a new era.

> (that’s not saying US meddling didn’t stunt growth)

That's a pretty quaint way to put it, especially after mentionning Cuba. Just to go on with Taiwan, South Korea and Japan which have specially strong ties to the US.

In general attributing individual traits ("attitude toward time management", "scapegoat", "blaming") to whole countries to explain long term economic evolutions and gepolitics is iffy at best.

I disagree. It’s a cultural thing. Taiwan or Singapore vs The Philippines. They have different attitudes (they can be changed if there is a pop wide effort).

It takes leadership and the cooperation of the people.

With the right government, I’d bet Cuba could turn things around, US or no US. But it’s hard work, sacrifice and effort.

If it's just a cultural thing, how would you compare Singapore to Ireland for instance ? They have roughly the same population, while Ireland's GDP is 500 billion and Singapore "only" 400 billion.

Are Singapore people about 100 billion dollars lazier, less educated and with a worse attitude ? Are Ireland people and culture that much aimed towards hard work, sacrifice and effort ?

Yes, a working government, educated people, hard work sacrifice and effort all weight on the scale when it comes to how a country will be doing. But reducing a whole country's issues to that is naive and misleading in a pretty perverse way in my opinion.

Too often it's also used the other way round to explain a country's success, and pat oneself on the back for being virtuous and hard working when things are just so much more complex and nuanced.

You asked such a weird question.

Singapore and Ireland are both successful countries with GDP per capitas in the tens of thousands. And we know why; good government, hard-working population, and low corruption. Comparing them because of a little GDP difference is pedantic.

Philippines, on the other hand, elected the son of their former dictator that looted billions from the country. Shows you a country that’s not ready to progress because the majority actively votes for corruption and shuns integrity.

The issue with this line of reasonning is we'd find similar issues in most of the other "successful" countries.

I don't think people look at most US presidents as beacons of human value and righfullness. Same for South Korea or Japan leaders. The US basically swapped "corruption" for "lobbying", revolving doors and other more evolved systems. But we'll find explaination for why it doesn't matter for these countries in particular. And these probably include the general population being wealthy enough to not let things slide behind a critical point and take a hit when shit is about to hit the fan.

Perhaps my point is there's no specific recipe for success, and in particular perception of "good government, hard-working population, and low corruption" often come after the other issues are solved and the country is on the rise.

The common theme among Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, besides friendly relations with the US as GP mentioned, is that they are all within the cultural influence of "Confucianism".

Strong ties with the US is neutral. You can take advantage of it, or not. Egypt is a laggard, Greece is a laggard, Israel and Iceland aren't.

But I think you bolster my point, culture has to do a lot with how a people confront adversity and overcome it.

Both Korea ad Taiwan could have cried about being colonies of Japan whose resources and people were taken with no return. Japan could have succumbed to US defeat and felt sorry for itself too.

> Egypt is a laggard, Greece is a laggard, Israel and Iceland aren't.

To put numbers on it: Egypt is 38th in GDP, Greece 54th, Israel 29th and Iceland 111th. I have a hard time understanding who you call laggards and who aren't.

The impact of strong ties with the US is an opening on the US domestic market and not getting shut down internationally. China's position for instance is clearly impacted by that, regardless of how we morally view the CCP.

Korea ad Taiwan: they cried and asked for reparation from Japan, got some, and also further strong US support in face of the USSR and Chinese influence going in the region.

Japan: the US forgave most of their crimes, reforged their constitution and used it as US base soil to keep an eye on the whole region, while making sure it's economy doesn't end in rubbles and try to bring stronger ties to the neighboring red countries. Hell, Japan is still basically US's small puppy in so many ways (was fun to look at the US meat import ban from sanitary reason getting magically removed as the US threw a stern look at Japan)

Those tigers(Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan) Heavily focused on education are way smaller than the Phillipines.

If there’s a country in Latin America people should not pay attention or follow it is El Salvador.

Texas’ proximity to Mexico is a dream for both. Cheap, clean energy, an abundance of workers, and a stable trading partner.

It shows in the housing. Prior to runaway housing costs(2018 or so), you could get a house in El Paso that almost looked like something out of Scarface for under 300. It's gone up quite a bit now, but still cheaper than much of the nation.

Yeah there’s been a ton of growth in Monterrey, it feels very new and modern like all the development in Austin. I’m very optimistic about northeast Mexico.

Monterrey is a very impressive city. San Pedro feels basically indistinguishable from California at a quick glance.

> abundance of workers

this doesn't benefit the average texan. you are thinking like a billionaire that you aren't.

Texas depends on immigrants to grow its economy… Immigrants in Texas' workforce contribute $119 billion to the Texas economy annually in personal income, making up nearly 1 in 5 of all wage dollars in the state.

Further, immigrants make up significant shares of workers in industries like construction (37%), business services (23%), and manufacturing (26%). Immigrants make up even larger shares of more specific essential industries, like 53% of landscaping services, 47% of building services, 42% of meat processing, 22% of restaurant and food services, and a third or more of several manufacturing industries, including those that produce plastic products and electrical products.

I’m not sure what you had in mind when you said the average Texan doesn’t benefit. It seems like they do, since the average Texan lives in a home, comes in contact with landscapes, and uses … products.

I’m thinking like someone who lives in Texas and comes in contact with immigrants. Guest workers, first and second generation Americans. It’s impossible to live in any sizable city in Texas and not see that immigrants are essential to Texas’ economic success.

https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economists/~/media/docume...

Most people on HN are temporarily embarrassed billionaires waiting for their next startup to be graced

Cheap/clean energy and Texas don’t seem to line up. They have an oil and natural gas monopoly that goes all the way up to their elected officials. It’s literally why they had that massive grid failure. It wasn’t a capacity issue it was just greed.

Texas exists at the crossroads of both the Midwestern Wind Belt (actually, it gets SE coastal wind too) and the Sun Belt. Also, it has large open areas that are sparsely inhabited, pretty much ideal for building large renewable power plants. The only challenge is paying for transmission.

There's a huge oil & gas industry too, but that energy is more easily exportable (see e.g. Freeport LNG), which can put a floor on prices.

Texas nevertheless enjoys an abundance of renewable energy sources. They have more than any other state including California and are adding more faster than any other state. Their renewable fraction is still not as high as California, because they use so much more energy, but their absolute numbers are very high. Texas also has a natural advantage that their solar resources are far to the west of their population centers, so their "duck curve" looks a little more tolerable.

Indeed, 2021 was absolutely terrible:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis

especially enraging to me:

> To cover debt incurred due to high natural gas prices, utilities outside Texas have had to raise prices. Oklahoma Natural Gas is charging customers up to $7.80 per month for the next 25 years to securitize its costs of $1.4 billion during the crisis.[133] The natural gas industry reaped a windfall profit of $11 billion during the crisis.[22] Texas gas utilities were permitted by the Railroad Commission to issue bonds to cover what they paid to suppliers, to be paid off by customers. Municipal gas companies have also added surcharges to bills

Texas produces the most wind power and the second most solar power of any American state. The most recent power shortage in September was caused by low evening winds; the US DoE responded by allowing Texas to temporarily exceed emissions limits from their gas plants: https://www.ercot.com/about/legal/doe202c

Texas has the biggest wind farm output in the US (5th biggest in the world) and the biggest solar power potential in the US.

Accounting for population growth, Mexico is one of the most successful countries. The standard way of measering growth on a per-capita basis doesn't account for this, but that's a bias towards resource-rich countries with declining populations.

What are some example countries with declining populations with strong per-capita growth?

Croatia, Moldova.

Poland?

Good choice. Also Albania, with a long-term population decline and quite strong economic growth.

“Poland will be wealthier than Britain by 2030”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/05/07/poland-europ...

Economy size is very interesting in itself and has a lot of relevance in some decisions, but per capita has always seemed more important to me, i.e. the Italy and Russia comparison as similar size economies is an interesting one.

Mexico is apparently 10th in population.

> but per capita has always seemed more important to me

> i.e. the Italy and Russia comparison as liknande size economies

Every time I hear "hur-dur economy less than Italy" (mostly on Reddit, ofc) I always remember a funny trivia: there are more pensioners in Russia (40M+) than everyone in 15-65 y/o gap in Italy (36M).

So yes, economy size without a tie to the population size and social, geographic and other measurements is.. misleading at best.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1093953/number-of-retire...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/569201/population-distri...

> I always remember a funny trivia: there are more pensioners in Russia (40M+) than everyone in 15-65 y/o gap in Italy (36M).

Yes, that's the kind of trivia I find puzzling as Italy has a higher percentage of people over 65.

GDP PPP is the one that matters.

If they would include the drug dealers money probably it would be up a few more spots.

The USMCA has been very good for Mexico. It’s one of those facts that’s off narrative so virtually nobody knows it’s so.

What is USMCA?

The replacement for NAFTA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States%E2%80%93Mexico%E...

"Professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers predicted in 2017 that Mexico will be the 7th largest economy in the world in 2050."

Mexico has been developing faster than the usual suspects in Asia. It is almost fascinating to see the boom in Mexico since around 2016.

More and more Americans are expatriating or gaining residencies in Mexico to escape from America. And I can see the allure of a modern, rapidly developing life in Mexico as opposed to rent-extraction-life in America.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

It's a rather surprising thing.

Not me. Deep in fmx and omab

America should agree to merge with Mexico. It would be more powerful than anyone has imagined.

It would make sense for North America to harmonize more standards to create an bigger economic community between CA, MX and USA.

For example I came across a situation recently where someone want to export a few year old Mercedes vehicle from Canada to USA, and it was impossible as the standards were not harmonized, and the manufacturer would not certify the vehicle as meeting the USA standards.

The US government intentionally doesn't harmonize vehicle standards and disallows private importation of cars less than 25 years old as a non-tariff trade barrier. These protectionist measures are terrible for consumers but they are strongly supported by manufacturers, dealers, and unions so the policy is unlikely to change.

Wyomingites and west virginians don't want their ~~blood poisoned~~ voting power diluted. It'll be a hard sell to reform the US in any significant capacity. I don't foresee it happening soon.

Early on in US history the Yucatan tried to join the country and was only narrowly rejected over concerns that it would be a slave state.

After the Mexican-American war Polk wanted the US to expand all the way to modern Santiago de Queretaro and could have easily done it but the guy who ultimately negotiated the treaty on the US' behalf was against the idea of US expansion so negotiated against the US' own interests.

If those two decisions had gone the other way then it seems likely that all of Mexico if not all of Central America would be part of the United States today.

Curiously, the US Articles of Confederation explicitly permit the annexation of Canada within the United States but offers no similar offer to Mexico.

> Article XI. Canada acceding to this confederation, and joining in the measures of the united states, shall be admitted into, and entitled to all the advantages of this union: but no other colony shall be admitted into the same, unless such admission be agreed to by nine states.

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/articles-of-con...

This isn't a new idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_of_Mexico_Movement

Mexico has a gdp a bit larger than Florida, the 4th largest state by gdp. Adding Mexico would add less than 7% to our gdp.

The power of the us + Mexico would be very similar to just the US.

From a national security perspective, wealth is important but so is population size. If you have both, you win. Industrial production is a third factor in national security, related to wealth and population size, and Mexico can help with that. At the moment, Brazil is a non-player but in a hundred years that could change given their population size and you could have a potential Brazil-US rivalry. An integration with Mexico will be a contingency for that, giving north US a buffer zone in addition to a larger population.

From a prosperity perspective, that seven percent will grow, especially when Mexico can benefit from strong US institutions. You also have to factor in that the entire pie will get bigger due to free labor and capital flow, which will be the main win here. So it won't be 107 percent it'll be 107 percent times by a factor.

Mexico is also culturally adjacent to the US being a Catholic majority country and immigrants from Mexico have a history of integrating quickly.

Transfer payments may be needed to make the US lower classes "whole" given they're now competing with so many more people which will dilute their wages. But if done properly it should be a positive sum situation where everyone benefits.

Pan-Americanism is a fundamentally good idea if implemented gradually and carefully.

I completely agree with your positive outlook on the possibilities. Too many people are adopting a zero-sum mindset on the subject.

Why ?

With NAFTA and USMCA the US can reap all the trade benefits without any of the liabilities

Turn on the immigration spigot and control population growth at will

In this scenario, metric system adoption will probably prevent this merger /s.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com