Mexico wants a trade agreement with South Korea
The Yucatan Times - 29 May 2022
Mexico wants a trade agreement with South Korea
The Mexican government is advancing its foreign trade agenda, so it is expected to conclude the negotiation of a trade agreement with Ecuador in the first half of 2022, the Undersecretary of Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Economy, Luz María de la Mora said on Thursday, May 26.
She added that they will also negotiate a trade agreement with Korea because currently, 80% of Korean products enter Mexico without paying tariffs, while Mexican agricultural products pay up to 800% tariffs to enter the Korean market.
The official explained that the Mexican government is also in negotiations with the United Kingdom in order to have a trade agreement, as well as with Argentina and Brazil to expand the current partial scope trade agreements that are “very small.”
And with the European Free Trade Association, made up of Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein, and Iceland, there is a preferential trade agreement that is intended to be modernized and adapted.
De la Mora said that in the case of Ecuador, negotiations began in this administration to get closer to Latin American countries, so it was proposed to have a free trade agreement instead of a partial scope agreement with nations such as Ecuador.
“We are close to concluding this negotiation. The ninth round was in the week of May 23 in the city of Quito… and the idea is that we can conclude this semester, in order to proceed with the internal legal processes that would allow Ecuador and Mexico to have a Free Trade Agreement,” she explained.
She said that in the case of Ecuador “Mexico is the first country that has invested in infrastructure, telecommunications, financial matters, so Mexican products have an important presence in that South American country.”
Mexico and a trade agreement with South Korea
In the virtual Foreign Trade Forum of Thomson Reuters and Baker Tilly, the official commented that “We intend to work with South Korea, it is our third trade partner, it is the fifth destination of our exports, and it is the 14th investor in Mexico”.
It is interesting to have a trade agreement with South Korea to “consolidate greater access to agri-food and industrial goods. Today, for practical purposes, Korea has a free trade agreement with Mexico because practically 80% of imports enter our country free of tariffs. And that is not the case for Mexican products.”
For this reason, Mexico seeks to “balance the commercial relationship”, because Mexican products have “enormous potential” to access the Korean market, but they have to pay tariffs of 800%, and “only 20% of the products that Mexico sends to South Korea enter without any tariffs”.
“We want to reduce this disparity and put ourselves on equal tariff terms, in order to balance the trade relationship,” the Undersecretary of Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Economy, Luz María de la Mora concluded.
