Market
The tariff worked exactly where it was designed to. Mexican industry didn't stop importing.
On January 1, 2026, tariffs of 5% to 50% took effect on 1,463 tariff lines — mostly consumer goods. Data from the first months of the year shows two distinct, verifiable movements.
Mexico's imports from China, 2020–2025
Source: Banco de México, trade balance. 2021 and 2023 figures: estimated from revised official data.
China is Mexico's second-largest trading partner: close to 20% of the country's total imports. The 2025 bilateral trade deficit was approximately USD 123,000 million.
Where the tariff hit
Between January and May 2026, imports in the directly tariffed categories fell versus the same period in 2025:
Source: El Financiero, August 30, 2026, citing data from the Secretaría de Economía.
The tariff targeted finished consumer goods. The inputs and capital goods that sustain Mexican industry didn't fall — they hit an all-time high.
Source: Banco de México, trade balance, January–June 2026.
The result is arithmetic: the same volume of inputs, at a higher cost in the tariffed categories, absorbed by the Mexican importer's working capital.
That's where LINNAR comes in. We can't change the tariff. We can change the rest of the structure: the FX spread, the supplier's terms, the cost of the advance payment, the settlement route and the hedge. In an operation that already absorbed a tariff increase, every basis point of financial cost recovered is margin that comes back.
You don't have to be an expert in everything.
A company that imports from Asia on a recurring basis has already solved the hard part: finding the supplier, sustaining the relationship, moving the goods, clearing customs. That's their business, and they do it well.
The financial layer of that operation — exchange rates, correspondent banking, terms, hedging, credit lines — is a different specialty, one whose conditions shift every quarter and that requires sitting at the table with institutions year-round.
No one can sit at both tables at once. You stay at yours. We sit at the other one, for you.