Mexico Enacts Up-to-50% Tariffs on 1,463 Non-FTA Imports; China and India Protest

Protectionist tariff waves are hardly new: the U.S. Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930 raised average duties to 59%, deepening the Great Depression, and the 2018–19 Trump Section 301 tariffs on China reverberated through global supply chains. Mexico’s sudden 2025 hike sits at the intersection of two longer arcs—reshoring/friend-shoring within the USMCA bloc and the fracturing of the post-1995 WTO consensus on Most-Favoured-Nation treatment. By aligning its external tariff wall with Washington’s anti-China stance before the 2026 USMCA review, Mexico signals that geopolitical calculations now trump the liberalisation orthodoxy that guided NAFTA’s 1994 launch. Whether this moment matters a century from now will hinge on whether it sparks a broader Latin-Asian tariff spiral or proves a footnote like Brazil’s short-lived 2012 import surcharges; but if replicated, such measures could entrench a 1930-style trading-bloc world, redirecting investment and supply chains for decades.