Mexico City, July 3. Both the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement ( USMCA ), which entered into force on July 1, and its predecessor, the North American Free Trade Agreement ( NAFTA ), have made it easier for US farms to "flood" Mexico with meat, eggs and milk , since according to official data, around one in every four kilos consumed in the country come from across the northern border .
Dairy consumption has continued to increase in Mexico, and the country's production capacity has been unable to keep pace . Imports now represent 28 percent of national consumption, according to the study "Swimming Against the Current " by the Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy.
NAFTA also shifted the origin of Mexican dairy imports from New Zealand and Europe, with more than 90 percent now coming from the United States.
According to the report, in 1994, Mexico imported only 4 percent of its milk consumption; however, dependence increased as the market opened up, as dumping practices by the United States artificially lowered dairy prices.
As a result, U.S. milk imports from Mexico soared 450 percent in the first 12 years after NAFTA went into effect, while from 2008 to the end of 2022 they increased another 238 percent.
"Mexican producer prices plummeted by half with the flood of cheap U.S. dairy products, and that trend continued with another 10 percent drop since 2005. This has made it difficult for Mexican producers to compete and hampered the new administration's efforts to boost domestic production," the study reports.
