MEXICO CITY, MEXICO – FEBRUARY 23: President of Mexico Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo speaks during the daily morning briefing at Palacio Nacional on February 23, 2026 in Mexico City, Mexico. The Secretariat of National Defense of Mexico confirmed that during a security operation in Tapalpa, Jalisco, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as ‘El Mencho’, leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, was killed. Mexican authorities confirmed the deaths of over 25 members of the armed forces in different attacks by the Cartel after the operation that killed Oseguera. (Photo by Cristopher Rogel Blanquet/Getty Images)
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It’s too bad Mexico is a neighbor of the United States. That’s not a dig at Mexico or its people, rather it’s a dig at Mexico’s politicians.
Since there’s a booming U.S. economy north of Mexico, one that individuals of Mexican descent play an important role in keeping elevated, Mexico’s politicians don’t have to be serious about implementing policies associated with growth. And they don’t have to because they’re constantly being bailed out by the United States.
Evidence supporting the above claim can be found in the $61 billion that Mexican workers in the U.S. remitted to Mexico last year. With so many Mexicans working so productively in the U.S., and remitting tens of billions worth of their production, Mexico’s economy remains far more vibrant than it would be if the Congo, North Korea, or Peru bordered Mexico.
Which is paradoxically Mexico’s domestic problem. With the world’s richest country next door, the country’s political class once again doesn’t have to pursue policies of economic freedom so associative with growth. The U.S. takes care of things for them.
The tens of billions that are remitted annually add more to Mexico’s economy than both tourism and oil. While Mexican workers in the U.S. add important value to the U.S. economy, they add essential value to Mexico’s economy. Sadly, presidents like Claudia Sheinbaum and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (Sheinbaum’s predecessor) operate fully aware that the U.S. economy will always protect them from themselves.
In Sheinbaum’s case, San Diego, CA-based Sempra Energy had been working for years with approval from Mexican regulators and the U.S. Department of Energy to build a LNG terminal in Sinaloa. Millions had been expended on this four-year-old project only for Sheinbaum’s government to deny the permits necessary for its completion. More recently, the Sheinbaum government cancelled Royal Caribbean’s plans to create a $1 billion, “Perfect Day Mexico” cruise destination in Mahahual.
Traveling back in time to Lopez Obrador’s presidency, a partially built $13 billion Mexico City-based airport was cancelled, along with a Modelo project that had been eyed in Mexicali. Readers can presumably see where this is going.
A persistent anti-business, anti-investment mindset infects Mexico’s political class to the detriment of the nation’s economy. Investment powers economic growth, but with the political class having made evident through their actions that capital flows into the country won’t be treated well, it’s inevitable that capital sources will increasingly look away from Mexico when contemplating where to put money to work.
What’s sad is that is Sheinbaum, Lopez Obrador, and Mexican politicians past and future seemingly know they can run the country in obstreperous fashion. They know that whatever mistakes they make, their rich neighbor to the north will continue to save them with policies that don’t resemble Mexico’s precisely because U.S. economic policy, regardless of the person or Party in power, always ultimately leans in favor of growth and prosperity.
The Mexican people understand this intimately, and that’s why they continue to risk their lives to get to the U.S. for something better. What’s powerfully sad, and also sickening, is that people like Claudia Sheinbaum know this too, and instead of pivoting toward policies of growth that would allow their citizens to remain in Mexico, they keep operating like the U.S. is their neighbor. Which means the Mexican people must routinely escape to a better life, one that unfortunately saves the Sheinbaum’s of the world from their own incompetence.