Export manufacturing plants under the IMMEX program bought 7.8% fewer inputs of Mexican origin between January and August 2026, for 1.44 trillion pesos, while their purchases of imported inputs rose 4.3%, to 3.53 trillion, according to preliminary Inegi figures reported by Expansión.

The figure matters because Plan México set a goal of raising national content by 15% in chains such as automotive, electronics and chemicals, and because Mexican inputs that qualify as originating add to the regional content required by the T-MEC. The Inegi tabulation gathers all imported inputs without distinguishing the country of origin, so materials from the United States or Canada can also count toward that percentage. The balance shifted direction: between January and August 2025, national inputs grew 19.8% and imported inputs 6.5%, pushing the Mexican share from 29.0 to 31.5 pesos per 100. In 2026 the proportion returned to 28.9 pesos, a level slightly below that of 2024. The total value of inputs barely grew 0.5%: the size of the purchase did not change, the split did.

Electronics explains the jump. The manufacture of computer, communication and other electronic equipment reported 977,180 million pesos in imported inputs, 34.2% more than in the same period of 2025, and added 248,780 million, more than the net increase of the entire program. Without that branch, the rest of the subsectors fell 101,779 million; transport equipment provided the largest counterweight, with 138,376 million less in imports. On the national side, chemicals registered 35,225 million less, a drop of 19.6%, and basic metal industries 33,796 million less, 16.2%; together they accounted for 57% of the decline. In Ciudad Juárez, El Diario de Juárez reports that 96% of maquiladora spending on inputs went abroad between January and August.

Enrique Morán, president-elect of Index, set three priorities for expanding local production: medical devices in the northwest, semiconductors in the west and metalworking in the northeast. He will bring the electricity supply before the authorities, which he identified as a condition. The next data point will come with the September cumulative figure, and regional content will remain a reference in the T-MEC review.

This article was written with the assistance of artificial intelligence from verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.