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The decree converts sugar's border protection from a specific (per-kilogram) duty of USD 0.33–0.39 to an ad-valorem tariff of 156%–210.44%, with the top rate applied to refined liquid and invert sugar. Ad-valorem duties bite harder than specific duties when world sugar prices fall — exactly the scenario the Secretaría de Economía cited (a domestic supply glut compounding weak international reference prices squeezing Mexican cane growers and millers). This is a straight import-substitution/price-floor move: it raises the landed cost of non-preferential sugar imports enough to make them uneconomic against domestic production, independent of where global prices move next.
It sits alongside Mexico's broader late-2025 tariff-reimposition run — the 31 December 2025 basic-basket decree (beef, pork, dairy, beans, rice, oils) and the December 2025 LIGIE/TIGIE tariff-line decrees — all issued under the same Sheinbaum-administration "Plan México" self-sufficiency framing, but this sugar decree lands six weeks earlier and at a materially higher rate ceiling than any of the basic-basket lines.
(Central America outside CAFTA-equivalent terms, EU, and other non-FTA WTO suppliers); USMCA-preferential US/Canada sugar trade is unaffected by the ad-valorem ceiling.
decrees) of Mexico using tariff-schedule amendments rather than safeguard investigations to manage agricultural border protection — faster to implement, harder to trace/aggregate than a formal trade-remedy case.
Mexican food-processing and beverage manufacturers reliant on imported sugar inputs.
the top (210.44%) and bottom (156%) of the disclosed range; the DOF decree text carries the authoritative schedule.
unclear whether this is framed as permanent or subject to periodic Secretaría de Economía review.