FILE - Construction workers ride on a beam hanging from a crane at the construction site of a high-rise residential building in Mexico City, June 17, 2022.

Mexico would actively align itself with the United States in the face of possible trade battles with the Asian giant, the Mexican Secretary of Economy, Marcelo Ebrard, hinted.

Mexico's Secretary of Economy, Marcelo Ebrard, has hinted that his country will actively side with the United States in the impending trade battles with China.

“There is a contest between China and the United States, now much stronger than there was a few years ago,” Ebrard said at a business forum on Tuesday. “And we already have a design for the route we are going to follow.”

“What would be the main design, the main idea?” Ebrard asked. “Mobilize all legitimate interests in favor of strengthening the North American region.”

For example, he said that Mexico would benefit from a nearshoring process (the transfer of services or processes to geographically closer locations), given the tendency for Asian plants to move to Mexico.

“The second very important mission we have is to accelerate, take advantage of the nearshoring opportunities to a thousand percent,” said Ebrard.

He noted that Mexico's domestic content represents less than 20% of the country's manufacturing exports, and that Mexican authorities are looking at “how we can reduce all the imports that we have, that is, increase the domestic content in any way we can.”

Ebrard assured that the government would work with individual companies to ensure that suppliers and producers of parts also move to Mexico.

Mexico previously exported oil to the United States, but now the export of manufactured products such as cars, trucks, machinery and appliances have more weight than the oil trade.

In 2023, for the first time in more than two decades, Mexico displaced China as the main exporter of products for the US market.