For US trade, Mexico is the new China

With imports topping $530 billion, Mexico has become a crucial link in U.S. supply chains. Here’s what companies can learn from the data 

What you’ll learn in this article:

• How Mexico overtook China and Canada as America's top trading partner
• Why trucks and rail matter more than ships in the Mexico story
• What Mexico all-modes data reveals that ocean manifest data misses

🎯 Best for: Business founders and leaders, procurement teams, logistics executives, supply-chain managers, importers, and market intelligence teams.

For decades, when Americans imagined global trade, they imagined container ships arriving from China. But increasingly, America’s trade economy is now powered by trucks rolling across the Mexico-U.S. border into places such as Laredo, Texas.

Mexico quietly overtook China as America’s largest trading partner in 2023, and the gap has only grown since. In 2025, the U.S. imported $535 billion worth of Mexican goods — an increase of 6% from the year before — compared to only $308 billion from China. 

Of that $535 billion in imports, 73% arrived by truck — the Mexico-U.S. border is the world’s busiest land border — and nearly 40% passed through Laredo’s landlocked port. In 2022 the port of Laredo actually had more TEU container throughput than the Port of Long Beach, America’s busiest marine port and the top destination for Chinese goods. And all that land-based trade is captured in ImportGenius’ new Mexico all-modes dataset.

“This is more than just a shipping story,” explains ImportGenius Director of Customer Success Carolyn James, who hosted a webinar on Mexican all-modes trade data. “This is about how Mexico has become a new center of gravity in North American supply chains.”

For procurement teams, manufacturers, distributors, and competitive intelligence leaders, this shift changes where supply chain visibility matters most. Companies relying primarily on maritime trade data may be missing supplier relationships, sourcing shifts, and manufacturing activity happening across land and rail networks.

The USMCA effect 

If many Americans are unaware of their country’s sudden reliance on Mexican trade, it’s because Mexico’s rise has been gradual but consistent, outpacing both China and Canada over a 30-year span. Both imports and exports between the U.S. and Mexico has been steadily rising since the advent of NAFTA (now the USMCA) in 1994. 

As the data shows, Mexico’s share of US imports has risen sharply since 2020, following the supply chain disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic and, more recently, of the U.S.-China trade war. More than 70% of all imports from Mexico are USMCA compliant, which means they enter the country tariff-free. 

There’s more to Mexican exports than avocados and hot sauces: the country’s top exports to the U.S. are now vehicles, machinery, electrical machinery, and medical devices. It’s this diversification that has allowed Mexico to infiltrate U.S. businesses’ supply chains, as the country now makes both finished goods and intermediate inputs for export. 

What U.S. businesses can learn from all-modes data  

Because ImportGenius’ all-modes Mexican trade dataset covers maritime, air, rail and road shipments, companies can get a truly complete picture of the impact that Mexico is having in the United States and beyond. The ability to see all modes, rather than just maritime shipments, makes it the most complete dataset available. 

As the data shows, truck transport dominates Mexico’s exports, 80% of which is destined for the United States. But maritime shipments play a much larger role in Mexican imports — particularly goods from China, as companies there seek to circumvent their country’s trade war with the U.S. by setting up manufacturing and assembly facilities in Mexico. 

As tariffs and geopolitical tensions continue reshaping global sourcing, Mexico has become an increasingly important intermediary in North American supply chains.

And the Mexico all-modes dataset can identify nearly every importer and exporter moving goods through Mexico. The dataset includes consignees, shippers, HS codes, tariff régimes, values and more, providing a level of insight unavailable from other datasets. 

“There really are no blind spots in the Mexican all-modes data,“ says Ms. James. “Companies with access to this data can get a full picture of global goods movement through Mexico and into the United States. That gives them an indispensable edge in planning and adjusting their own plans.”

[CT1]