File photo for representational purposes only.
Mexico City: Pharma giants AstraZeneca, Bayer and Boehringer Ingelheim on Thursday announced investments in Mexico worth hundreds of millions of dollars, despite trade tensions between the country and the United States.
Britain’s AstraZeneca and Germany’s Bayer and Boehringer Ingelheim, together with Mexico’s own Carnot Laboratories, unveiled plans to plough a combined $600 million into their Mexican operations.
The announcement comes as Mexico scrambles to avert a 30-percent tariff on many of its exports to the United States, which had been meant to take effect last week but which Trump agreed to delay by 90 days.
Trump has also trained his sights on the pharmaceutical industry, threatening to impose tariffs of up to 250 percent on imported drugs.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum told reporters that the new pharma investments were part of her ambitious plan to massively grow local manufacturing, partly to replace imports from Chinese companies accused of using Mexico as a backdoor into the United States.
Bayer said it would set aside $160 million over the next five years to expand its production facilities in Latin America’s biggest economy.
Boehringer Ingelheim announced a multi-year investment of $187 million to convert its tablet production plant in Xochimilco, south of Mexico City, into “the largest in the world.”
AstraZeneca for its part, said it would spend $120.7 million through 2026 to increase its clinical research activities and expand manufacturing facilities that produce medications for type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease, among other activities.
Carnot, meanwhile, announced the construction of a new plant in the central state of Hidalgo at a cost of $187 million over five years.
Thanks to the USMCA free trade agreement between Mexico, the United States and Canada, nearly 85 percent of Mexican exports to the United States go tariff-free.
But Trump has nonetheless imposed tariffs impacting its automotive, steel and aluminum sectors, and is now also threatening other sectors.
Despite the tensions, several multinationals, including Heineken, Walmart and Netflix have announced major investments in Mexico in recent months.