Nearshoring · USMCA · IMMEX
Tariff exposure, long ocean lead times and single-country sourcing are all balance-sheet risks. Producing inside North America answers all three at once.
The case
Each of these is structural rather than cyclical, which is what makes it worth building around.
Goods that meet the agreement's rules of origin move duty-free between Mexico, the United States and Canada. Producing inside the bloc insulates your supply chain from tariff action aimed elsewhere, and shortens the line between plant and customer from weeks to days.
The IMMEX programme lets you import materials, components and equipment temporarily without paying general import duty. Paired with CIVA certification, VAT on those temporary imports is credited rather than paid — which keeps working capital in the business instead of parked with the tax authority.
Mexican transfer pricing rules provide a safe-harbour route for maquiladora operations. Applying it correctly is what keeps a foreign parent from being treated as having a permanent establishment in Mexico, and therefore from having its wider income drawn into the Mexican tax net.
Mexico graduates over 110,000 STEM students a year into a young workforce with real industrial experience. That is a hiring pool deep enough to staff a plant or an engineering centre without relocating the whole team.
Mechanism
A shelter lets a foreign company begin producing in Mexico under an established local entity's permits, IMMEX registration and customs authorisations. Because that scaffolding already exists and has already been approved, a launch that would otherwise mean a year of sequential filings compresses into 30 to 90 days.
The shelter carries the local legal, labour and customs liability while you run production. Your equipment, your processes and your intellectual property stay yours throughout — the shelter takes the administrative exposure, never the know-how.
Trade, customs and supply chain
Executive brief
Get the complete 12-page report detailing IMMEX regulations, ISN state tax comparisons and utility feasibility studies.
Sources compiled from: U.S. Customs and Border Protection (USMCA Data), Mexican Ministry of Economy (Secretaría de Economía — FDI Data), Mexican Tax Authority (SAT — Article 182 / CIVA), CANIETI Semiconductor Master Plan, and the Jalisco Tech Hub Act.
Thirty minutes about your move into Mexico. If a diagnostic fits, we propose one.
