Marking the most important progress of any U.S. meals and agricultural export market, Mexico has surged 65% over the previous 4 years and is shortly catching as much as Canada. Export gross sales to Mexico reached $31.4 billion in 2024, barely beneath Canada, the highest market at $32.4 billion. Given latest developments, Mexico will seemingly surpass Canada for the primary time and declare the highest spot in 2025.
The expansion has been spurred by the booming post-COVID Mexican economic system, buoyed by a quickly rising manufacturing sector. The financial increase has allowed shoppers to increase their conventional food plan, and U.S. meals and agricultural producers are serving to meet Mexico’s rising demand for extra meat, poultry, dairy, processed meals and feed grains.
Since 2020, Mexico’s share of all U.S. agricultural exports rose from 11.2% to 16.4%. On a quantity foundation, corn, pork, dairy merchandise, soybeans, and poultry merchandise make up the highest 5 U.S. commodities bought by Mexico, in line with the USDA Overseas Agricultural Service.
The rise of Mexico as a buyer has been an enormous success story for U.S. agriculture, however danger elements are rising within the near-term. Mexico’s economic system has been slowing and the unusually robust peso in 2023 and 2024, dubbed the “tremendous peso,” has weakened by about 15% since early 2024. Mixed with a slowing economic system – the Worldwide Financial Fund forecasts the Mexican economic system to shrink by 0.3% in 2025. Mexican shopper buying energy will seemingly be challenged in 2025.
Grains
At $13.9 billion, grain, feed, oilseeds, and associated merchandise is the biggest class of exports to Mexico. Two elements are primarily driving the robust latest progress on this class: feed demand for the increasing home pork, hen and beef industries, mixed with an ongoing extreme drought that started in 2023, and which continues to restrict home crop yields and grazing situations. Home corn manufacturing in 2024 was down 16% from 2022 ranges.
Given the continued commerce tensions between the U.S. and China, Mexico will virtually actually overtake China as the biggest export marketplace for U.S. grain, feed, and oilseeds in 2025. As Mexico faces ongoing drought, with restricted areas for grain manufacturing and an increasing livestock sector, it might want to import extra grain and feed substances to fill its home provide deficit.
Meat and poultry
Supply: USDA PSD On-line, CoBank calculations
Though Mexico’s home meat and poultry manufacturing continues to climb at a wholesome clip, consumption is increasing so shortly that imports are growing as properly. We count on this development to proceed within the coming years.
Dairy
At $2.5 billion in export gross sales, Mexico is by far the biggest vacation spot for U.S. dairy merchandise and virtually twice the dimensions of the second largest, China. Complete U.S. dairy export worth to Mexico has risen by 76% since 2020, pushed principally by Mexico’s steadily growing urge for food for cheese, which has grown 3.3% per capita on common over the previous decade. Ample runway stays for cheese exports as Mexican per capita consumption is just 11 kilos versus 42 kilos within the U.S.
Processed agriculture merchandise
Supply: USDA-FAS GATS April 2025
Mexico can be a sizeable importer of a wide selection of packaged meals and associated processed agricultural merchandise. The majority of that is made up of consumer-packaged items, particularly bakery and confectionery gadgets. Different classes embody recent fruit and greens ($1.4 billion), sweeteners ($1.2 billion), processed fruit and greens ($900 million), and tree nuts ($360 million).
Affect of commerce
Over the previous decade, cross border commerce of meals and agricultural merchandise between the U.S. and Mexico has doubled to $80 billion. Of the $49 billion in U.S. imports of Mexican merchandise, recent fruit and greens ($18.8 billion), alcoholic drinks ($11.6 billion), and processed meals ($10.8 billion), make up the highest three classes.
Though free commerce agreements have fallen out of favor lately, it’s arduous to see the excessive diploma of interconnectedness in meals methods between U.S. and Mexico as something however a “win-win” for each nations. For the reason that North American Free Commerce Settlement in 1994 (later changed by the United States-Mexico-Canada Settlement), meals and agricultural commerce between the three nations has risen almost ten-fold in greenback phrases. Customers on either side of the border profit from a wider array of meals decisions at decrease costs than they’d with out free commerce.
