Trade Policy Development - Mexico

Information dated: 2017

• Supporting multilateral, regional and bilateral trade negotiations

Traditionally Mexico’s AfT activities have been focused on providing technical cooperation to third countries on the basis of its experience in multilateral, regional and bilateral trade negotiations. In fact, with 12 free trade agreements (FTAs) that encompass 44 countries, Mexico ranks high on the scale of bilateral and regional FTAs in the world, which means a wealth of experience on this matter to share with other developing countries. Mexico has undertaken several technical assistance activities, in support of less developed countries, in their design and operation of trade related policies, in areas with a high degree of expertise such as: technical barriers to trade standards and technical regulations, regulatory cooperation to developing countries from Latin America, the Caribbean and, Southeast Asia:

The following is a list of the activities done by Mexico that includes technical assistance activities provided by Mexican experts:

Project on Regulatory Cooperation, headed by COFEMER in the APEC Economic Committee, in 2015. During 2013, Mexico implemented the Project SEC0212A financed by APEC, which had the objective to develop a Guide to evaluate the impact of regulation with the experiences of APEC economies. The “Regulatory Impact Evaluation Guide, Vol. I. Methods and Methodologies, and Vol. II. Case Studies” was issued as a deliverable. This new project is a continuation of the previous one, and Mexico developed and implemented a formal training program based on the information contained in the Guide for public sector servants of APEC economies, through two workshops: in the first workshop (in Mexico City, on June, 2015), experts in social regulation shared their knowledge and experiences in the use of methods like Cost-Benefit Analysis; Risk-Based Regulation Approach and Methodologies such as Contingent Valuation Method, Value of Statistical Life, among others, with officials from APEC economies. In the second workshop (in Philippines as APEC host economy of SOM, on August, 2015), experts in economic regulation shared their knowledge and experiences in the use of methods like Cost-Benefit Analysis, and Methodologies , including Compensating variation, Herfindahl index, among others.
ALADI: Latin American and Asia Pacific Observatory (April 14-15, 2016): The Latin American and Asia Pacific Observatory meeting took place on April 14-15, 2016 in Montevideo, Uruguay (the ALADI headquarters) in order to identify the links between Latin America and the Asia Pacific region. This meeting was attended by representatives of the ALADI members, who shared their experiences in the relationship with Asia-Pacific. In the case of Mexico, its participation focused on an overview about its trade policy with an emphasis on the benefits that the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) can provide for Latin America and the increase of its participation in regional value chains.
FEALAC Seminar on Inter Regional Trade (May 19th 2016): The Seminar on Inter-Regional Trade, proposed by Korea at the 7th FEALAC Ministerial Meeting in Costa Rica, took place on May 19, 2016 in Seoul, Korea in order to enhance mutual understanding on inter-regional trade between East Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean, which is influenced by global trade trends such as Mega-FTAs such as TPP. Mexico participated with a presentation of Mexico´s Free Trade Policy aims to give a general overview about how Mexican economy transited towards trade liberalization since the mid 80´s until nowadays, including the TPP.
Training with Mexican experts for the technical barriers to trade committee and the Impact of Standards and Technical Regulations on International Trade (October 28-30, 2016)

Mexican Government representatives participated in technical assistance activities in Asunción, Paraguay. The activities were developed under two modalities: one workshop for public officials from Paraguay (under the title “Training with Mexican experts for the Technical Barriers to Trade Committee”) and one workshop devoted to representatives from the public and private sectors of Paraguay (under the title “The impact of Standards and Technical Regulations on International Trade”).

The Mexican trainers were from the Mexican Ministry of Economy. The workshops were held in the facilities of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Paraguay.

The topics for the training sessions were selected from an offer-request basis in the framework of the Latin American Association for Integration (ALADI). Among others, these were some topics:

Preparation of Technical Regulations (Normas Oficiales Mexicanas).
Harmonization with International Standards and participation in International Standardization Organizations.
Mutual Recognition Agreements – Regulatory Cooperation.
Conformity Assessment and Implementation of Good Regulatory Practices.
Notification of Technical Regulations to WTO Members and National System for the distribution of notifications to the WTO Members.
Standards (Normas Mexicanas).
The “NOM Seal”.
The Mexican and Paraguayan experiences regarding the importance of standards, technical regulations and conformity assessment procedures in international trade.

In a more horizontal scheme, a Joint Cooperation Fund with Chile set out to promote actions on competitiveness, public administration, culture, and environment. The success of this Joint Fund encouraged the creation of another one with Uruguay.