Executive Summary

• The biggest Mexico risk factors investors need to watch
  • Remittance risk
  • Currency risk
  • Capital flight risk
  • Oil price risk
  • Debt risk
• What Mexico must prioritize going forward to secure its future

If you have not yet read Part 1: Trouble South Of The Border available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump has nabbed many a headline with his disparaging remarks on how Mexico is sending ‘bad’ Mexicans over the border to ostensibly steal US jobs and sell drugs. He has called US leaders ‘stupid’ for letting this happen. The truth of the US-Mexico economic relationship is entirely different.

According to Pew Research, between 2005 and 2010, 1.4 million immigrants moved back to Mexico from the US, 90 percent of them voluntarily.  The total amount of 11.3 million unauthorized immigrants to the US has remained stable, not increased, over the past five years, having risen from about 3.5 million in 1990 to a peak of 12.2 million in 2007. The figure dropped between 2007-09, mainly due to a decrease in immigration from Mexico. Since 2009, an average of about 350,000 new unauthorized immigrants have entered the US annually, of which less than a third are from Mexico, compared to one half before the financial crisis of 2008. (Source)

There are other misunderstandings about the economic and financial relationship between the US and Mexico that transcend raising constituent anger about faux population movements. There is the matter of ‘the wall.’ On Sunday, August 16^th, Trump, in his first (and so far only) policy statement, said “illegal” remittances to Mexico is used to pay for said wall, along with raising visa fees (the current fee of $160 would require 80 million Mexicans come to the US to cover the cost of a wall).