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The Ley de Comercio Exterior is the overarching Mexican statutory framework for external trade regulation, tariff administration, and trade-remedy enforcement. It creates five principal operative authorities:
Titles I–IV — Objectives, Competences, Regulatory Measures, and Tariff Architecture. Title I (Articles 1–3) establishes the LCE's objectives: regulating and promoting foreign trade, increasing competitiveness of the national economy, and contributing to well-being of the population. Title II allocates competences between the Secretaría de Economía (SE) and Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público (SHCP). Title III regulates tariff and non-tariff instruments: SE is empowered to determine the TIGIE (Tarifa de la Ley de los Impuestos Generales de Importación y de Exportación) tariff schedule and to regulate non-automatic licensing, quotas, and other non-tariff measures on imports and exports. Title IV (Article 24) governs rules of origin for preferential-trade and free-trade agreement purposes, including the originating-goods framework for USMCA/NAFTA, the Pacific Alliance, and 13 other FTAs.
Titles V–VII — Antidumping, Countervailing Duty, and Safeguard Investigation Regime. The trade-remedy titles are the LCE's highest-impact authority from an IPTM perspective. The UPCI (Unidad de Prácticas Comerciales Internacionales) within SE administers all AD/CVD investigations under the LCE framework:
sold at less than their normal value; COFECE (formerly CFC) provides input on injury. A positive determination results in compensatory AD duties published in the DOF as a GECEX-equivalent Resolución Final of SE. Mexico maintains hundreds of active AD orders, predominantly targeting Chinese, Brazilian, US, and Korean products in steel, textiles, chemicals, footwear, and agricultural products.
government subsidies benefit subject-good producers; injury standard parallels AD proceedings. CVD orders are less frequent than AD but have been applied to subsidised imports from China and the US (particularly agricultural subsidies).
and special safeguard procedures for WTO-bound agricultural products. Bilateral safeguards applicable under USMCA and other FTAs are administered under the same LCE architecture.
UPCI authority to anti-circumvention inquiries tracking rerouting of subject merchandise through third countries.
210 days of the initiation resolution's DOF publication, one of the shorter statutory deadlines in the G20 trade-remedy space.
TIGIE and PROSEC — Tariff Classification and Sectoral Promotion Programs. The LCE is the statutory parent of the TIGIE tariff schedule (updated by Decreto TIGIE and Decreto LIGIE instruments published periodically in the DOF) and the PROSEC (Programas de Promoción Sectorial) regime. PROSEC grants preferential import-tariff rates on capital goods and intermediate inputs to companies in 21 designated sectors — automotive, electronics, textiles, footwear, furniture, and others — creating a two-tier tariff architecture where formal PROSEC registrants face dramatically lower duties than non-registrant importers of the same HS codes.
IMMEX — Maquiladora and Export-Manufacturing Program. While the IMMEX program is codified primarily in the Decreto IMMEX (2006, amended 2013), the IMMEX program operates within the LCE framework. IMMEX allows certified manufacturing exporters to temporarily import raw materials, components, and machinery duty-free (or with duty deferral), conditioned on export of the processed output. The LCE provides the statutory authority for SE to establish such temporary-importation regimes.
Export Controls and Strategic-Material Restrictions. LCE Title III empowers SE to restrict or prohibit exports of specific goods on national security, public-health, public-order, or environmental grounds, and to administer export-licensing regimes for dual-use items and strategic materials. The 2022 Decreto nationalising lithium under FONADIN/LitioMX cross-references LCE as the regulatory framework for export restrictions on lithium concentrates.
Gortari simultaneously with Mexico's GATT-Uruguay-Round implementation; replaced the 1986 Ley Reglamentaria del Artículo 131 Constitucional en Materia de Comercio Exterior as the governing trade statute
investigation procedures, evidence rules, and SECOFI competences in greater detail
revised injury-determination standards to comply with DSB rulings from early WTO dispute settlement
IMMEX program deriving authority from LCE Articles 21–25
titles, aligning with WTO practice and Commerce ITA §1677j analogues
all amendments; available at diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/28.pdf
Implementing instruments directly filed in the IPTM register that derive authority from this statute:
and apparel imports; TIGIE authority derives from LCE Title III; IMMEX complementary provisions also reference LCE
SE competence to grant preferential import conditions derives from LCE Art. 5(VI)
TIGIE/LIGIE instrument architecture is authorised under LCE Title III
modification; PROSEC program authority derives from LCE Title III Art. 5(VI)
regime; cross-references SE competences established under the LCE framework
in response to a potential influx of Chinese goods rerouted through Mexico following the 2025 US tariff escalation — the USMCA non-market-economy rule of origin provisions and UPCI enforcement capacity are the key variables
to meet demand as US-China trade diversion through Mexico intensifies the number of domestic- industry petitions from Mexican manufacturers
strengthened export controls on critical minerals (lithium, graphite) cross-referencing the 2022 nationalisation framework