Mexico in Numbers: How much value does Mexico add to its exports?

“A car exported from Mexico can include engines and transmissions produced in the United States; steel, aluminum and auto parts made in Canada; electronic components from Asia; and auto parts and bodywork manufactured in Mexico. Therefore, the total value of [Mexican] exports does not directly indicate how much value was generated within the country.”

The passage above appears in an article published last month by México ¿cómo vamos?, a Mexico City-based think tank.

In the same article, México ¿cómo vamos? notes that the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) publishes data on the domestic value added in products shipped abroad from Mexico.

“This indicator measures how much value is generated in Mexico in manufactured export products that participate in global value chains,” the think tank says.

Interest in the Mexican value added in Mexico’s exports has recently increased because the country’s export revenue has grown significantly in 2026 and much of that growth is fueled by the shipment to the United States of computer and electronic equipment, products that typically have a large percentage of Asian content.

I wrote about Asian content in Mexico’s tech exports in this “Mexico in Numbers” article, published two weeks ago.

Mexico in Numbers: How Taiwanese imports are fueling Mexico’s record tech exports

The focus of today’s article is INEGI’s latest data on value added for Mexican exports, which was published last December. Unfortunately, this data is only published on an annual basis and therefore the most recent statistics relate to 2024, before Mexico became a leading exporter of AI servers to the United States. Data for 2025 will be published later this year.

* The data in this article mainly comes from INEGI, with additional numbers derived from the analysis of that data by México ¿cómo vamos?

In 2024, just over 44% of the value of Mexico’s manufacturing sector exports was added domestically

According to INEGI, the value of Mexico’s “global manufacturing production” — i.e. manufactured goods made in Mexico for export — in 2024 was just under 8.25 trillion pesos (around US $480 billion at the current exchange rate).

The Mexican value added in those products totaled just under 3.65 trillion pesos, according to INEGI.

Thus, 44.2% of the value of Mexico’s manufacturing sector exports in 2024 was generated in Mexico.

In other words, for every 100 pesos in export revenue, 44.2 pesos corresponded to Mexican value added and 55.8 pesos corresponded to imported inputs.

The Mexican value added in 2024 was 1.6 percentage points higher than it was in 2023.

On the value added traffic light system developed by México ¿cómo vamos?, 44.2% corresponds to yellow — above red (under 42%) but below green (50%+). In other words, Mexico’s level of domestic value added in 2024 was más o menos (so-so).

México ¿cómo vamos? says that the goal for Mexico should be to “engage in increasingly complex activities and capture a larger share of the value associated with export production.”

The federal government agrees, as one of the goals of its Plan México economic initiative is to increase by 15% the use of domestically made content in products made by the following sectors: automotive, aerospace, electronics, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and chemicals.

According to Pedro Casas, Executive Vice President and CEO of the American Chamber of Commerce of Mexico, “North America — through Mexico’s manufacturing base — is [already] progressively substituting Asian-sourced inputs and redirecting them through a regional production platform that delivers the servers, components, and infrastructure American firms need to build AI data centers faster, cheaper and without the geopolitical risk of direct dependence on Taiwan or China.”

Mexico’s value added explained 

According to México ¿cómo vamos?, the 44.2% domestic value added in Mexico’s exports in 2024 can be divided as follows:

• 14.8% corresponded to Mexican inputs.
• 29.4% corresponded to “gross value added generated in Mexico” — i.e. value made up of wages, profits and taxes.

Mexico’s auto sector is the biggest contributor to domestic value added 

Almost half of the 3.65 trillion pesos in Mexican value added in products shipped abroad from Mexico in 2024 was generated by the automotive sector.

Over a quarter of that amount — 26.9% — was part of the total value of cars and trucks manufactured in Mexico and shipped abroad.

Mexico’s auto parts sector created 18.5% of the Mexican value added. Therefore, automakers and auto parts manufacturers together generated 45.4% of the Mexican value added in Mexico’s exports in 2024. In other words, they generated around 1.66 trillion pesos (US $96.2 billion).

The Mexican value added embedded in other exports from Mexico in 2024 was as follows:

• Computers and “peripheral equipment”: 3.8%
• Medical, dental and laboratory equipment: 3.7%
• Audio and video equipment: 3.6%
• Electrical components: 3.3%
• Other manufactured products: 40.1%