Hundreds of vehicles cross into the United States through the San Ysidro gate, on June 14, 2021 in the city of Tijuana, Baja California.
EFE / Joebeth TerriquezJoebeth Terriquez / EFE
The United States Government extended border restrictions with Mexico for another month as a mitigation measure for the contagion of covid-19 and despite the fact that the most serious economic impact could fall on its side of the border. While in Mexico, the recovery is driven by the industrial sector linked to the free trade agreement (T-MEC), businesses in the United States that sold primarily to Mexicans continue to suffer the consequences of the closure of the border.
"In Baja California, at least, the closing of the border has not gone very well," says Gilberto Leyva, counselor and former president of the Tijuana National Chamber of Commerce, Services and Tourism (Canaco-Servytur) and of the Tourism and Convention Committee of Tijuana (Cotuco).
“This leakage of consumers that we had before that were going to supply the US, since they cannot go, they are consuming in Mexico.
But they are doing terribly with the closing of the border, "he adds.
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Mexicans who live on the border with the United States have a very different offer of products to the rest of the country and for generations have crossed the border on foot or by car to buy goods of all kinds because they are of better quality, greater variety or better price In the US This is also the reverse, on many occasions, US residents travel to Mexico to buy, for example, drugs that are significantly cheaper in their neighbor to the south. Since Mexico does not currently have access to Americans restricted, the country has been able to continue benefiting from this trade.
In February, the mayor of the border city of Imperial Beach, which is located north of Tijuana, warned that the "disastrous" vaccination in Mexico threatened to worsen the economy. "The launch of the vaccine in the US has been slow, it is improving, but in Mexico it has been an absolute disaster," Mayor Serge Dedina said according to local media. "If Mexico remains unvaccinated, it could have huge implications for continued border stagnation," he said at the time.
Only in the city of El Paso, Texas, which shares the border with Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, the trade of Mexicans who cross the border by land reaches 1.4 billion dollars a year, says Tom Fullerton, professor at the School of Economics from the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP).
In the region that includes Laredo, McAllen, Brownsville and El Paso, between 8% and 14% depend on the consumption of Mexican tourists, adds Fullerton
"There is a lot of geographic concentration of the reduced cash flows as you get closer and closer to the border bridges," Fullerton explains.
This means that, although the percentage seems small, the impact is brutal for the owners of these businesses who depend almost exclusively on Mexican tourists who cross land.
For many of these businesses, Fullerton adds, the assistance checks that the Administration of President Joe Biden has sent to American families, as well as small loans with low interest rates that are part of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) They have allowed them to remain open. Different municipalities and cities in the US located on the border have made efforts to accelerate vaccination in Mexico in order to end the restrictions that are impacting the economy of its inhabitants.
In an effort between the two countries, dozens of buses were organized to take about 85,000 maquiladora workers from Reynosa, Tamaulipas to Texas to be vaccinated against covid-19 in Texas.
In Sonora, 22,000 vaccines were also applied as part of a border program, the National Council of the Maquiladora Industry and Export Manufacturing Industry (Index) reported on Thursday.
"North America is in the middle of a serious pandemic," Fullerton said.
“The obvious way to achieve an opening of the southern border is to introduce the same regulation that will allow the opening of the northern border: allow all fully vaccinated people who are healthy and have the proper documents to cross.
That could even accelerate the acquisition and distribution of vaccines in northern Mexico, "added the specialist.
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