How is it possible to break the record of foreign direct investment in such a complicated year? That is the issue. For now, we have a fact that forces us to rub our eyes: the investment reaches a maximum of 34,265 million dollars in the first semester. This despite Donald Trump, of the pessimistic forecasts about the global economy and Mexican GDP and uncertainty for some internal factors, among which the reform of the Judiciary and insecurity stands out.
The direct foreign investment record is reached in a semester in which there is a drop in total, public and private investment. This is measured, in INEGI, with the gross fixed capital formation indicator. Between January and May of 2025, there is a 6.7% drop compared to the same period of 2024.
How can this happen? Direct foreign investment grows 10.2% while national private investment and public investment fall. IED growth fails to compensate for the drop of 29% of public investment and about 5% of private. We can speculate that there is a more optimistic vision of foreign investors on the situation in Mexico and its attractions, but the thing is complex, it depends on the sectors and types of activity.
Anyway, it is very soon to draw conclusions. Many things will depend on the negotiations of the tariffs and the renegotiation of the T-MEC … on the implementation of the reform of the Judiciary and the ability to execute the federal government.
The 10.2% increase in investment “conceals” the important differences between sectors. There is a 26% drop in manufacturing and a reduction of 16.7% in mining. The “secret” is that these collapses were compensated by a strong increase in services. It highlights a 90% increase in FDI in financial services. Investors in this activity are attracted to the potential of the domestic market, expressed in the high returns obtained by companies in the sector.
The fall in investment in manufacturing clearly expresses uncertainty for tariffs and T-MEC. It is clearly noticeable in a reduction in manufacturing employment. This is not a new phenomenon, because we have already been with adjustments in the employment figure in industry 18 months. Anyway, the fall in June 2025 is 2% compared to the same month last year.
In the 2025 record we have some curiosities. The return of the Spanish investment is striking. In the first semester of 2024 the numbers marked a divestment of 219 million dollars and now bring a positive number of 5,943 million dollars.
Spain returns to the second position among the main investors in Mexico. We talked about record in 2025, among other things, because the Iberians bet again on Mexico. They are relevant players in the financial, energy and tourism sectors. If their companies had behaved as in 2024, foreign direct investment would be at 28,103 million dollars. The note would not be that there is a record, but we would have an amount lower than the records of 2022 and 2023. These numbers are worth it as proof that something changed with the arrival of Claudia Sheinbaum or the departure of López Obrador.
Another peculiar aspect of our official foreign investment figures is the absence of China. Compete with the United States for number one as the greatest IED generator in the world, but in Mexico it does not appear among the first places. The United States, Spain, Canada, Japan and Germany are the Top 5 in the report elaborating by the Ministry of Economy in 2025. We could assume that this absence is a derivative of the United States pressure, which does not want the dragon near its territory. The interesting thing is that Chinese investment in Mexico has been sub -registrated for years. Officially, Mexico has received a total of 2,960 million dollars in FDI in China, between 1999 and 2024. Although you do not believe it.
