Trade Wars, COVID-19, USMCA, and Protectionism: Exogenous Factor Influence on U.S- Mexico Supply Chains in the Automotive Industry

This research explores the presence of COVID-19, the U.S-China trade war, and the implementation of NAFTA as USMCA, have had on U.S.-Mexico trade relations focusing on the automotive industry. With rising trends of protectionism in international trade, this research focused on the language that Tesla and General Motors company sites in Mexico used from 2021 to March 2023 in their released articles to the public and how frequently the variables of COVID19, the U.S China trade war, USMCA and protectionism were discussed. Articles in both Spanish and English were included in this analysis. It is of particular importance to focus on the automotive industry as it is the largest industry in trade for Mexico with the U.S. In the 2021-2023 period, the Mexico General Motors and Tesla company websites collectively released 97 articles. The sample greatly consisted of articles from General Motors. However, because the presence of General Motors is much more established in Mexico than is Tesla’s this is logical. The presence of these exogenous variables of COVID19, USMCA, U.S China Trade War, and rising protectionism caused major impacts in the global economy. Through content analyses of the released media articles from General Motors and Tesla, it was found that these factors which deeply impacted the global economy are being discussed in a smaller level of automotive supply chains.