Mexico's Tariff Policy

Abstract . While there is common agreement that Mexico's Industrialization period was helped by a protective commercial policy, there has been little testing of this hypothesis. This paper investigates the possibility that Mexico may have used her changing tariff postures not to provide aid for her growing industries but rather to improve either her terms of trade, her revenues or her balance of payments during the 1930–1965 period. The research shows that except for isolated instances none of the individual arguments examined, nor their combination, could explain Mexico's tariff policy. It is therefore concluded that tariffs for protection were employed to achieve industrial development.