This Is Something Trump Can’t Break
The president’s effort to use tariffs to steer manufacturing back to the United States can only go so far.
This essay belongs to a series called "The New World Disorder," which examines the erosion of the postwar international system and how nations are adapting as America's influence diminishes. No one anticipated that the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution would unfold here, on the outskirts of the Mexican city of Juárez, adjacent to a cluster of modest homes where Roger Vilchis sells Tostitos and Coca-Cola from a roadside cart.
The area is devoid of amenities, with dogs resting on the dirt streets and norteño music wafting through the air. A notice on a chain-link fence cautions, "It is prohibited to throw garbage or dead animals here." When a vast white edifice began to emerge from a plot of land equivalent to several football fields, Mr. Vilchis, 25, assumed it might be a shopping mall.
Instead, it turned out to be a factory, and not just any factory, but one belonging to Inventec, a Taiwanese behemoth with annual sales exceeding $20 billion that manufactures servers for AI. The local community's response to the plant's arrival was one of surprise and optimism: "We saw it as good," Mr. Vilchis informed me. "We understood that there would be more opportunities."
The Inventec facility is a towering symbol of how Mexico is not only enduring but also challenging the Trump administration's aggressive stance against free trade. At a time when the post-World War II global trade framework is unraveling, Mexico is experimenting with the idea that the United States can unilaterally dissociate from the rest of the world.
As Mexico's economy secretary, Marcelo Ebrard, recently stated, "free trade is no longer the reality we are living." Mexico and other middle powers are capitalizing on their competitive advantages and indispensability to the U.S. economy to withstand the Trump administration's tariff campaign. While Washington pours its resources into dominating the global AI market, Mexico has become an increasingly vital contributor to America's artificial intelligence surge, supplying over one-third of the United States' imported computer servers.
Written by urgent.news from The New York Times's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
