Mexico’s trade is being transformed by AI products

A third of imports and exports in 2026 have been goods needed for artificial intelligence

Products underpinning artificial intelligence are reshaping Mexico’s trade, as the Latin American country becomes a key hub for assembly of the hardware going into data centres in the US.

Between January and April 2026, AI-enabling products comprised more than 30 per cent of Mexico’s exports and imports value, a record high, according to the latest official statistics from Trade Data Monitor.

Their classification as AI enablers is based on a World Trade Organization list of more than 100 commodity codes including chips, servers, equipment and their constituent raw materials like gases, chemicals and metals.

When it comes to exports, the biggest driver of the AI uptick is data processing machines — or AI servers — which in 2025 were valued at $84.6bn. They surpassed passenger cars ($58.5bn) as the country’s largest export for the first time.

This is “an amazing shift”, says Gilberto García-Vázquez, chief economist at Johns Hopkins’ Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab and former official at Mexico’s Secretariat of the Economy. However, he warns that the country’s relatively small value add to the AI value chain risks questionable economic development implications.

Mexico’s imports of AI products represented 33.5 per cent of the total in the first four months of 2026, up from 25.8 per cent in all of 2025, according to TDM data. This reflects greater imports of AI server inputs from Asia, with Taiwanese companies assembling the final servers before shipping them to the US. Mexico’s AI product exports jumped from 23.2 per cent to 31.1 per cent over the same period.

This reshaping of Mexican trade partially reflects how AI servers have become more sophisticated and expensive. Comparing the first four months of 2025 and 2026, the average unit value of Mexico’s data processing machines exports increased fourfold from $1,179 to $4,840, TDM data shows.

The northern state of Chihuahua has become the country’s leading hub for assembling AI servers. Electronics firms have based themselves in the state for more than two decades, making use of its talent pool, tariff exemptions and deferrals on components for products exported north of the border, and proximity to fast-growing US states like Texas and Arizona.

Fernando Alba, undersecretary of economy for Chihuahua, tells fDi the state has received about $2bn of investment commitments from Taiwanese firms between 2021 and 2025 and a further $750mn so far in 2026.

“The requirements and the configurations of the new facilities are totally different [to years past],” he says, noting their higher power needs and use of robots in production lines.

Taiwanese companies including Foxconn, Pegatron, Wistron and Wiwynn have expanded their assembly operations in the state. In June, Inventec announced plans to invest $450mn to expand its operations in Chihuahua.

In the first quarter of 2026, the state’s exports rose to a record high of $35.99bn, double their value in the same period of 2024, according to data from Inegi, Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography.

“Since the AI revolution was happening in Arizona and Texas, it was the obvious choice [for Taiwanese groups to] choose Chihuahua as a partner because they’ve been here for so many years,” Alba notes, adding that the state is the only ecosystem in the world so connected with the US and Taiwan.

The rapid build-out of AI data centres, and the expensive hardware they require, has already started reshaping trade and investment in other countries within the AI supply chain, including the US, Taiwan and South Korea.

AI-related trade and investment has helped boost Mexico’s otherwise laggard economy. But García-Vázquez warns it should not be compared to the country’s auto industry.

“Mexico adds much more value to cars than [AI servers],” he says, noting that most of the value in these expensive tech products is added in chipmaking countries like Taiwan and Korea.

He says the low value-add in Mexico from these assembly facilities makes them more mobile than factories in industries like automotive. “This investment arrived in six months and it can leave in six months,” he adds, noting the expansion of AI server factories in Texas.

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