ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the manufacturing-export-led (MEL) productive restructuring of the Mexican economy has resulted in a new type of subordinate articulation to the world market framed within the neo-liberal patterns of the international division of labour. It analyses the origins of the neo-liberal subordinate insertion of the Mexican economy into the new international division of labour. The chapter examines the performance of the Mexican economy during neo-liberalism through the identification of the major economic sectors, the changing patterns of Foreign Direct Investment inflows and foreign trade. It also analyses the sectoral dynamics of productive investment and productivity growth and labour conditions to assess their relative impact as competitive factors. The chapter shows that the weakness, ineffectiveness and fragility of the Mexican MEL model. The transnational companies took advantages of the low-cost structure, especially in wages, consolidated as a result of the restructuring processes to relocate their assembly production plants in Mexico as an export platform to the USA.
