{"id":19776,"date":"2026-09-08T11:59:36","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T17:59:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/miranda-partners.com\/news-and-content\/miranda-intelligence\/public-affairs-chatter\/mis-mexico-public-affairs-chatter-jul-28-2026-2\/"},"modified":"2026-11-05T21:43:26","modified_gmt":"2026-11-06T03:43:26","slug":"mis-mexico-public-affairs-chatter-jul-28-2026-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/miranda-partners.com\/es\/news-and-content\/miranda-intelligence\/public-affairs-chatter\/mis-mexico-public-affairs-chatter-jul-28-2026-2\/","title":{"rendered":"MI\u2019s Mexico Public Affairs Chatter \u2013 Sep. 1, 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

From theory to practice: A new FDI screening bill heads to Congress<\/strong><\/h4>

Mexico has long held, on paper at least, the power to block a foreign acquisition on national security grounds. What it has lacked is a concrete mechanism to easily do this. Article 30 of the 1993 Foreign Investment Law allows the Comisi\u00f3n Nacional de Inversiones Extranjeras (CNIE) to block acquisitions for security reasons, but sets no parameters, triggers or procedure, leaving the power so far largely theoretical. In practice, Mexico has operated one of the more open and predictable foreign-investment regimes among large emerging markets: restrictions are concentrated in a relatively narrow set of reserved or capped sectors, with foreign investors otherwise generally free to acquire Mexican companies without a separate national-security filing.<\/p>

On 30 August 2026, the Federal Executive sent the Senate a bill amending the Foreign Investment Law to replace that nebulous authority with a formal screening regime, bringing Mexico into line with frameworks already in place in the United States, the European Union and much of the OECD. The Senate takes up the bill in the ordinary session starting 1 September. The change is important not only because it creates a new authorisation process, but because it changes the organising principle of part of Mexico\u2019s foreign-investment policy: from relatively clear sectoral ownership restrictions towards a broader and necessarily more subjective assessment of national-security risk.<\/p>

The institutional composition of the CNIE would change materially. The Defence, Navy and Public Security ministries would join as voting members, alongside the ten ministries that currently sit on the Commission, Interior, Foreign Affairs, Finance, Welfare, Environment, Energy, Economy, Infrastructure\/Communications\/Transport, Labour and Tourism, whose mandate has historically centred much more on promoting, regulating and retaining foreign investment than policing security threats. The Attorney General\u2019s office, the National Intelligence Centre, the tax authority (SAT) and the Financial Intelligence Unit would sit as permanent non-voting participants in national-security sessions, and voting members would not be permitted to abstain on those matters. Each ministry\u2019s alternate on the Commission must now hold at least Subsecretar\u00eda rank, tightening a point the current law leaves open. In other words, this would no longer just be an investment-policy committee with a theoretical security veto: the security state would sit directly inside the decision-making process.<\/p>

Mandatory filing would turn on two conditions holding simultaneously: foreign participation above 49 per cent of a Mexican company\u2019s capital stock, and that company\u2019s assets exceeding a threshold still to be set by the CNIE. Deals crossing the ownership threshold but falling below the asset threshold could be filed voluntarily, though the bill does not specify how an unfiled, sub-threshold transaction would be treated if it were later judged to raise a security concern. Nor is it yet fully clear how aggressively the rules would capture indirect acquisitions, for example, the sale of a foreign parent company that happens to own a Mexican subsidiary operating in one of the relevant sectors. That point matters considerably for global M&A, where the Mexican business may be only a relatively small part of the transaction.<\/p>

The missing asset-threshold figure is likely to prove decisive. A high one would confine the regime to large strategic transactions, while a low one would pull a far broader share of foreign-backed M&A into national-security review. The bill requires the threshold to be published within 180 calendar days of entry into force, which follows the day after publication. Until that number is known, it is difficult for investors or bankers to judge whether this is principally a mechanism for a handful of politically sensitive transactions each year or a new regulatory layer affecting a meaningful share of cross-border deals.<\/p>

The sectoral perimeter is drawn broadly. It covers strategic infrastructure, spanning energy, transport, health, communications, mining, data processing and storage, digital systems, aerospace and defence, along with the land and premises needed for that infrastructure; critical and dual-use technologies, including artificial intelligence, robotics, semiconductors, cybersecurity, aerospace and defence technology, energy storage, quantum and nuclear technology, nanotechnology and biotechnology; the supply of essential inputs, including energy, raw materials and food security; and access to or control of sensitive information, particularly personal data.<\/p>

The Commission may also designate further sectors or activities by general resolution, so the reviewable universe can widen administratively after the bill takes effect, without a further act of Congress. This is one of the more consequential provisions. The initial statutory list is already broad, but the ability to expand it later means investors will have to monitor not only the law but subsequent CNIE resolutions. A sector not considered particularly sensitive at signing could conceivably become more problematic by closing.<\/p>

On review criteria, the bill adds the existence of risks or threats to national security to the economic factors already weighed under the current law, employment, technology contribution, environmental compliance and competitiveness, but does not itself define the term. The explanatory memorandum instead points to OECD principles of non-discrimination, transparency and proportionality. That provides some comfort, but not much legal precision. As White & Case notes in its analysis of the proposal, one of the areas where experience in other countries suggests further development would be useful is the review criteria themselves. The more clearly Mexico defines the factors the CNIE should consider, the less dependent outcomes become on the politics surrounding a particular transaction.<\/p>

Procedurally, the review period extends to 60 business days from the current 45, with an information request capable of stopping the clock for between five and 30 days and a further extension of up to 30 days available for complex cases. In reality, therefore, a difficult transaction could spend materially longer than three calendar months in formal review, before allowing for preparation of the filing or pre-filing discussions.<\/p>

More importantly, the regime would effectively be suspensory: a transaction requiring approval could not safely close while the review remained outstanding. Where the current law deems an unresolved request approved, silence under the new regime would be deemed a denial, a reversal that shifts the default risk squarely onto the investor. That distinction is likely to matter at least as much to M&A practitioners as the nominal review period. A regulator that does nothing would no longer allow the deal to proceed.<\/p>

National security review for foreign acquisitions, what changes, August 2026.<\/strong><\/p>

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Source: White & Case, \u201cNational security review for foreign acquisitions, what changes\u201d, August 2026. Table adapted and condensed from the firm\u2019s analysis<\/em><\/p>

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White & Case, August 2026; adapted from \u201cWhat practice elsewhere suggests is worth developing\u2019\u2019<\/em><\/p>

Outcomes would include clearance, conditional clearance, with risk-mitigation measures and potentially periodic reporting, or an outright block, decided by majority vote with conditions set case by case. The possibility of conditional clearance is important because experience elsewhere suggests outright prohibitions are relatively unusual; instead, authorities frequently negotiate remedies around governance, data access, supply continuity, local operations or security controls. Mexico has provided little detail on what its mitigation toolkit might look like, leaving another important area to secondary regulation and administrative practice.<\/p>

Penalties, restated in UMA rather than the minimum-wage units used since 1993, would rise to a range of 5,000 to 200,000 UMA specifically for share transfers completed by the Mexican company after denial or without prior clearance, and for breaches of mitigation conditions, with liability falling on the Mexican party that transmits the shares. Beyond the fines themselves, however, the larger commercial deterrent is likely to be transaction invalidity or the inability to obtain legal certainty over closing.<\/p>

For M&A, private equity and infrastructure investors, the practical effect is longer timetables, more complex closing conditions and greater uncertainty over who bears the risk of a mitigation regime or a blocked deal. SPAs for potentially covered transactions will need much more attention to regulatory-efforts clauses, long-stop dates, reverse break fees, allocation of mitigation risk and what remedies the buyer can be required to accept. A buyer may be willing to accept reporting obligations or information firewalls but not the disposal of a strategic asset; a seller will want to know that before signing rather than six months later.<\/p>

Indirect acquisitions are another important unresolved point. In many countries, FDI screening can capture the acquisition of a foreign company that indirectly controls a domestic strategic business. If Mexico follows that practice, a London, New York or Hong Kong deal with a relatively small Mexican subsidiary could still require a filing. White & Case identifies this, together with deal structuring, as an area where international practice may be useful as Mexico develops its regime. Clarifying treatment of offshore acquisitions, internal restructurings, joint ventures and minority investments would materially improve deal certainty.<\/p>

Greenfield investment also sits uncomfortably within the new test. As Alejandra Palacios of Cuatrecasas has pointed out, because the trigger is a percentage-of-capital-stock-and-asset-value formula rather than a test of acquiring control of an existing business, the bill does not appear to distinguish new-build investment from acquisitions of established companies. A foreign company building a new factory, data centre or energy-storage facility through a Mexican subsidiary could therefore potentially fall into the same framework once the subsidiary crosses the relevant asset threshold. That is very different from CFIUS, which generally focuses on acquisitions of existing US businesses, subject to some separate real-estate jurisdiction. This point is likely to draw comment as the bill moves through Congress.<\/p>

A comparison with the US Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) is instructive. CFIUS\u2019s jurisdiction turns on a functional test of \u201ccontrol\u201d of a US business, with no ownership percentage attached, and its mandatory-filing categories depend on the type of investor, including substantial foreign-government ownership, or target, particularly critical technology, critical infrastructure and sensitive personal data. Its rules therefore combine broad discretionary jurisdiction with narrower mandatory-notification categories.<\/p>

CFIUS\u2019s statutory review period is 45 calendar days, extendable to 90, with a further 15 days available in rare circumstances, although in practice preparation and pre-filing discussions can make the process considerably longer. It operates as a largely voluntary system outside the mandatory categories. Mexico\u2019s bill instead builds mandatory review around a bright-line ownership-and-asset test applied uniformly regardless of investor nationality. In that sense, as Alejandra Palacios notes, despite the understandable tendency to call the proposal a \u201cMexican CFIUS\u201d, its architecture sits closer to European screening systems, many of which use ownership or turnover thresholds and lists of sensitive sectors.<\/p>

Washington forms part of the backdrop to the initiative. Back in 2023, the two governments signed a memorandum of intent on investment-screening cooperation, a precursor to the bill now before the Senate. With the US reportedly keen to block or at least heavily scrutinise Chinese strategic investment in Mexico as part of the USMCA talks, this new law can readily be sold to the Americans as an anti-Chinese investment measure without ever mentioning China in the legislation itself.<\/p>

Some experts have written that one genesis of this new law was when the US allegedly pressured Mexico over Chinese Ganfeng\u2019s acquisition of Bacanora Lithium from its UK owners. Our own, perhaps not fully informed, view is that the Bacanora lithium saga was more about AMLO acting on his own nationalist political instincts than Mexico being under US pressure to block the deal, of which there is not much evidence. (Bacanora was a long way from producing any lithium which in any case is pretty abundant around the world and far from geologically rare.) In any case, if a national-security screening law had existed and had actually blocked the transaction, it would have saved the Chinese lithium giant roughly \u00a3190mn of takeover consideration plus the subsequent losses: Mexico cancelled the relevant Bacanora lithium concessions after the deal went through, an issue now subject to international arbitration. Sometimes being blocked can turn out to be the cheaper outcome.<\/p>

In April 2026 the US Treasury reaffirmed its support for Mexico\u2019s efforts to build a security-focused screening mechanism after a meeting between the two countries\u2019 finance chiefs. The USMCA review has increasingly turned on supply-chain security and concerns that Chinese goods or investment could reach the US market through transshipment, supply-chain integration or relocation via Mexico. Those are three different concerns: simple transshipment of Chinese goods through Mexico; Chinese inputs being incorporated into genuinely Mexican production; and Chinese companies themselves establishing Mexican production in order to serve the North American market.<\/p>

The bill itself sets no country-specific rules, applying identical thresholds regardless of an investor\u2019s nationality. A Canadian pension fund, Spanish infrastructure investor and Chinese state-linked company would therefore initially encounter the same statutory filing thresholds, even if their substantive national-security risk assessments might turn out very differently. The concern over Chinese capital and technology in strategic sectors nevertheless clearly sits within the wider political context in which the proposal has emerged.<\/p>

That leaves an underlying tension. Plan M\u00e9xico has sought to attract greater foreign capital into infrastructure, technology and high-value manufacturing, precisely the sectors where the new regime would add friction in time, cost and government discretion. Mexico has spent decades selling itself partly on the basis that, outside a reasonably clear list of restricted activities, foreign investment is welcome. A broad national-security review inevitably makes that proposition somewhat less simple.<\/p>

Against that, a credible screening mechanism could also help integrate Mexico more deeply into \u201ctrusted\u201d North American supply chains and strengthen its hand with Washington during the USMCA review. If the regime convinces Washington that Mexico can itself screen genuinely sensitive investments, it could reduce pressure for more blunt restrictions on Mexican exports or investment. The asset threshold the CNIE ultimately sets, whether indirect acquisitions are captured, how it treats unfiled sub-threshold transactions, and how the enlarged Commission\u2019s defence and intelligence members shape the pace and substance of reviews will determine which of these effects dominates.<\/p>

The legislation itself may also prove less important than the administrative culture that develops around it. Most countries with FDI-screening systems clear the overwhelming majority of transactions, and a regime can be relatively benign if the rules are clear, officials engage constructively with investors and remedies are proportionate. The same statutory powers can feel very different if timelines become unpredictable, criteria shift transaction by transaction or political considerations become embedded in the process.<\/p>

That all said, some M&A bankers are worried that the new law will add a new level of political discretion to authorisations, at best slowing down deals, at worst giving the government power to block buyers that it simply does not like. This is not an entirely theoretical concern in Mexico. Bank deals have long been subject to government authorisation due to required CNBV approvals. AMLO took full advantage of this during the sale of Banamex, publicly saying who he did not want, foreigners, to end up as buyers, while also picking a fight with the then preferred bidder, Germ\u00e1n Larrea of Grupo M\u00e9xico, who eventually backed out due in part to the fight.<\/p>

So while the law might for now carry favour with US authorities, some say be careful what you wish for. A national-security screening system created principally with Chinese investment in mind may not remain limited to Chinese investors. Once governments acquire discretionary powers over transactions, those powers can sometimes outlive the geopolitical circumstances that produced them.<\/p>

Interchange rates down, less than originally proposed<\/strong><\/h4>

Banxico and the CNBV put the Redes de Medios de Disposici\u00f3n rules back out for public comment on 26 August, six months after quietly withdrawing the previous version amid pushback from the larger banks. The consultation window runs to 24 September, and the text that has emerged this time looks considerably gentler than what regulators floated in October 2025.<\/p>

Miranda\u2019s Intelligence provided a detailed explanation in our FInTech Chatter published on August 31st<\/sup>. In summary, the original draft would have capped credit card interchange at 0.60 per cent per transaction. The new version will finally cap fees at 1.30 per cent, with an aggregate annual ceiling of 1.00 per cent of twelve-month operating volume. Non-credit cards get a hard peso cap of MXN10.80 per transaction rather than a percentage, with a 0.30 per cent aggregate limit. Implementation phases in gradually, with credit fees stepping down from 1.65 per cent to 1.40 per cent and finally to 1.30 per cent, giving issuers a runway rather than a cliff edge. But the end fees are coming down and banks will earn lower profits from interchange, all else equal.<\/p>

Beyond the fee caps, the draft bans network blocking, discriminatory exclusivity, cross-subsidies and forced volume minimums outright. It brings aggregators under direct regulatory obligations for the first time, covering infrastructure, security, contracts and settlement, and bars them from subcontracting card payment services to third parties. Same-day settlement to merchants becomes mandatory. Every participant, whether issuer, acquirer, aggregator or brand holder, must register with the CNBV before operating at all.<\/p>

Some lawyers have pointed to possible shortcomings in the proposal. For example, Narciso Campos Cuevas, the former head of banking policy at Hacienda now practising financial regulation at White & Case, flags the absence of explicit protocols governing how information moves inside a clearing house, the exact channel through which participating banks could coordinate pricing without anyone technically breaching the interchange caps. He also warns clearing house board seats can be held by people who simultaneously sit on the board of a bank, an aggregator or a brand holder, and nothing in the draft requires screening for that conflict.<\/p>

The impact on financial digitalisation is ambiguous. On the one hand banks and fintechs will make less money from having their cards used, so will have less of an incentive to issue them. On the other hand, assuming Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) come down, retailers will lose less commission to card usage and will have more of an incentive to accept them. In the end, it seems logical that retailers do not have to subsidise card issuance by paying high MDRs, and that card issuers ned to find other ways to generate income to justify issuing cards (higher NIMs, fees, etc) or cut costs (less cash backs).<\/p>

Anyone with a stake in how this plays out, particularly new entrants counting on the interoperability provisions to lower their cost of access, has a four-week window to put exactly these governance and collusion-risk arguments on the record before the comment period closes on 24 September.<\/p>

Congress returns between the budget and the ballot box<\/strong><\/h4>

Congress has returned to session with a full agenda, from the 2027 budget to anti-corruption regulation to copyright law.<\/p>

Next year brings elections for seventeen governorships, the entire 500-seat Chamber of Deputies, 1,800 mayoralties and 31 state congresses. Maintaining unity within the ruling coalition will be the first challenge, particularly in the Chamber of Deputies, which faces re-election in full alongside the wide slate of state and local races; majorities become harder to hold together the closer legislators get to the ballot box.<\/p>

Both chambers open under new leadership. Ra\u00fal Bola\u00f1os-Cacho Cu\u00e9, the Partido Verde deputy from Oaxaca, has taken over the Chamber of Deputies\u2019 Mesa Directiva under the rotation scheme that hands the presidency to the third-largest bloc in the legislature\u2019s final year, a slot his party has never held before. He arrives with Morena\u2019s backing already secured. In the Senate, Higinio Mart\u00ednez Miranda, the Morena senator and longtime Texcoco power broker, has taken the Mesa Directiva presidency after a contested internal process in which two rivals stood down in his favour.<\/p>

The agenda for the coming months was set out on 30 August at Morena\u2019s plenary meeting. An anti-corruption package, touching nineteen laws and creating two new ones, includes Mexico\u2019s first serious attempt at a federal lobbying framework. No such regime exists today, so every detail (who must register, what will be restricted, what counts as a reportable meeting) is being built from scratch.<\/p>

A copyright and platform reform introduces secondary liability for internet service providers for the first time, alongside sharper tools against commercial counterfeiting. Marketplaces and hosting providers will need genuine notice-and-takedown infrastructure, rather than the informal arrangements many currently rely on.<\/p>

The 2027 budget is due on 8 September, reworking federal fees and income tax provisions; nothing about its content has been made public beyond the date itself. A proposed environmental law reform, already presented on 27 August, introduces strategic assessment for large projects and redistributes authority across the three levels of government, layering in payments to communities that could affect costs on infrastructure and energy projects.<\/p>

The judicial reform now moves into secondary legislation, with a simplified ballot and a coordinating commission intended to unify how judges are evaluated. It is a quieter file than last year\u2019s constitutional overhaul, but one that continues to feed directly into how companies and investors assess institutional and legal risk.<\/p>

None of these issues individually carries the political weight of the budget, but together they make this an unusually consequential closing year for the legislature, particularly for the Chamber of Deputies as it approaches full re-election. Morena and its allies still have the numbers to legislate in both chambers. The question is how easily those numbers hold in the Chamber of Deputies as electoral calculations begin competing with legislative discipline.<\/p>

Consultation held, objections noted, rules unchanged<\/strong><\/h4>

The Agencia de Transformaci\u00f3n Digital y Telecomunicaciones has published the final\u00a0Lineamientos para la Protecci\u00f3n de los Derechos de las Audiencias<\/em>\u00a0in the DOF\u2019s Friday evening edition of 28 August, closing a public consultation that ran from 27 July to 21 August. Two organisations read the outcome of that consultation very differently, and both are worth hearing directly.<\/p>

Mexicanos Contra la Corrupci\u00f3n y la Impunidad, the anti-corruption watchdog that ran its own classification of the roughly 8,900 comments submitted, found that 82.2 per cent opposed the proposal, most of them citing risks to freedom of expression. The organisation\u2019s review of the final text argues that of the rulebook\u2019s 54 articles, 17 were modified or dropped, but that the mechanisms drawing the sharpest objections survived intact: the authority under Article 47 to order a broadcaster to modify or rectify content following a regulatory \u2018recommendation\u2019, and the open-ended supervisory powers preserved in Article 52, which allows monitoring and information requests without a defined ceiling. MCCI also flagged a procedural detail: the Comisi\u00f3n Reguladora de Telecomunicaciones (CRT)\u2019s mandated report on the consultation results, more than five thousand pages long, was, according to the group\u2019s review, generated the same week the regulator\u2019s president had already announced the\u00a0Pleno<\/em>\u2018s approval, a sequence the organisation argues undercuts the report\u2019s purpose of informing the debate before a decision, not after it.<\/p>

The C\u00e1mara Nacional de la Industria de la Radio y Televisi\u00f3n takes the opposite view of the same document. Its president, Jos\u00e9 Antonio Garc\u00eda Herrera, told reporters at a Palacio Nacional briefing on 27 August that the process had reached a genuine balance between audience protection and freedom of expression, crediting the CRT and the federal government for incorporating industry concerns raised during the consultation. CIRT\u2019s own account credits the back-and-forth with the regulator for producing changes to how audience\u00a0defensor\u00edas<\/em>\u00a0function and for addressing the compliance burden on smaller broadcasters, a constituency the chamber represents across some 1,200 affiliated stations. CRT president Norma Solano has separately maintained that the commission does not review content or editorial decisions and will only intervene when complaint-handling procedures themselves are not followed.<\/p>

Chatter Box<\/strong><\/h4>

A fourth state joins the metropolitan zone.\u00a0<\/strong>The Valley of Mexico\u2019s metropolitan zone has just picked up its first municipality outside the traditional three-state footprint, with Huitzilac in Morelos folded in via a DOF publication on 25 August that took effect the next day, bringing the count to 84 municipalities and boroughs across four states. The official justification runs through water resources, urban growth, mobility and environmental interdependence with the capital\u2019s southern edge, and the declaration is careful to note that no government merges and no state loses sovereignty. For companies running anything tied to water concessions, transport permits or environmental impact assessments in that southern corridor, the practical effect is a new coordination layer that state and municipal authorities will now have to reference, even if today it is a planning designation rather than a change to who actually issues the permit.<\/p>

A new pharmacopoeia.<\/strong>\u00a0Mexico\u2019s health regulator has just published version 14.0 of the FEUM, the country\u2019s official pharmacopoeia, in the DOF. Companies have sixty calendar days from that publication before the new edition takes effect, and that window is shorter than it looks for anyone still running quality control against the old text. The FEUM is the reference document that sets the analytical methods and the purity, identity and quality thresholds every registered drug, biologic or health input has to meet in Mexico, so a new edition changes the baseline every product is measured against, not just the paperwork describing it. The real task is not noticing that an update happened. It is going through, monograph by monograph, to see which analytical methods changed, which raw materials or specifications now fall short of a requirement that did not exist two months ago, and which registration files need updating before the deadline lands. Companies that leave this until the sixty days are nearly up will be doing that review against a deadline instead of ahead of one.<\/p>

Teachers don\u2019t want phones in the classroom.<\/strong>\u00a0Education Secretary Mario Delgado has told the Consejo Nacional de Autoridades Educativas this week that teachers back some form of restriction on phones in classrooms, based on a national consultation that ran school by school through the Consejos T\u00e9cnicos and fed into a broader push Sheinbaum announced earlier this year. Sixteen states already have restrictions on the books, and the federal push, framed around cognitive development, sleep disruption and cyberbullying rather than any single incident, looks headed towards a national standard rather than a patchwork of state rules. The SEP is positioning this as consensus-built, drawing on input from academics and former tech executives.<\/p>

Claudia Sheinbaum used the start of Mexico\u2019s new school year yesterday to launch \u201cEl ABC de las emociones\u201d<\/strong>, a nationwide programme aimed at the mental health of 14- to 18-year-olds. Students in the final year of secondary school and in high school will get a weekly hour to discuss emotions and wellbeing, supported by some 16mn guides for students, teachers and parents. The government says the programme will reach about 6.8mn young people. The initiative also fits into Sheinbaum\u2019s growing concern about teenagers\u2019 use of phones and social media. She has explicitly linked anxiety and other emotional problems to social networks, while her government is consulting teachers on tighter rules for digital devices in schools. The bigger question is what comes next. Sheinbaum has already said Mexico should debate whether, and how, to regulate digital platforms to stop children becoming trapped in \u201cinfinite scrolling\u201d. For Meta, TikTok and others, yesterday\u2019s announcement looks less like an isolated education initiative and more like another step towards tougher regulation of minors online.<\/p>

One country, one passport, one presidency.\u00a0<\/strong>President Sheinbaum has proposed tightening Mexico\u2019s nationality rules for the three highest executive offices, requiring presidential candidates, governors and Mexico City\u2019s head of government not only to be Mexican by birth, as the Constitution already requires, but also to hold no other nationality. The key change is practical as much as constitutional: dual nationals would have to renounce their foreign citizenship before registering, and a declaration before Mexican authorities would no longer be enough. Secondary legislation would have to establish how candidates prove that the other country has recognised the renunciation, potentially creating complications where foreign law makes citizenship difficult or slow to give up.<\/p>

The restriction would also continue once in office: presidents and governors could not seek another nationality, use a foreign passport, exercise political rights abroad or request foreign diplomatic protection. The government frames the proposal as a question of sovereignty and institutional loyalty, while critics will inevitably ask whether dual nationality should be treated as evidence of divided allegiance at all. Political attention has already turned to former Tamaulipas governor Francisco Javier Garc\u00eda Cabeza de Vaca, whose Mexican-US nationality was raised in litigation over his 2024 candidacy, although Sheinbaum has not presented the reform as directed at him. If approved, the real change is simple: for these three offices, saying you renounce another nationality would no longer be enough; you would have to prove that you actually did.<\/p>

Buy Mexican, and bring the receipts.<\/strong>\u00a0Mexico is tightening the use of domestic-content rules in federal public works, with steel now receiving particular attention. New rules published on 31 August require contracting authorities to set not only an overall national-content target for covered projects but, where construction steel is involved, a separate percentage for domestically produced steel. The threshold is not one-size-fits-all: each agency must assess domestic supply, quality, delivery times and technical requirements before setting it, with the stated aim of maximising Mexican participation without making projects technically or economically unviable. For certain international tenders, national-content requirements can reach 25 per cent of total project value and, for specified integrated projects, more than 25 per cent and up to 40 per cent.<\/p>

The bigger change is that \u2018Mexican content\u2019 now comes with a much heavier evidentiary trail. Winning contractors may have to produce mill or quality certificates, supplier declarations, tax invoices and import records for steel, obtain sworn statements from suppliers, and retain supporting information for seven years; site supervisors will verify compliance when steel arrives. The rules take effect on 1 September, while tenders already under way remain subject to the previous regime. The measure fits neatly into Plan M\u00e9xico\u2019s ambition to turn public procurement into industrial policy and raise domestic sourcing, particularly in steel: for contractors and suppliers, however,\u00a0Hecho en M\u00e9xico<\/em>\u00a0is becoming less of a label and more of something they will have to prove.<\/p>

A second chance at UNAM.<\/strong>\u00a0UNAM has opened 2,024 additional undergraduate places across 66 degree programmes for applicants who sat its admissions exam but failed to secure their preferred option, following the scandal that led the institution to re-sit the exam for 58,000 applicants. The re-sit, an in-person control exam, followed irregularities detected in the original online admissions process, and the university has since acknowledged that the new exam produced markedly lower minimum passing thresholds than in previous years: Psychology\u2019s minimum fell from 99 correct answers to 74, for instance, and Medicine\u2019s from 111 to 92, changes UNAM attributes to the altered competitive landscape created by the control exam itself.<\/p>

From 31 August to 4 September, 16,543 eligible applicants can rank up to three alternative programmes, with places assigned according to exam scores until vacancies are filled. The scheme does not expand overall capacity so much as redistribute unused seats after the main admissions round, but it gives thousands of rejected applicants a narrow second route into the university without sitting another exam. Results will be published on 4 September, with successful candidates able to begin enrolment the following day.<\/p>

Contacto:<\/b>\u00a0<\/p>

Laura Camacho<\/b>\u00a0<\/p>

Directora Ejecutiva de Asuntos P\u00fablicos de Miranda\u00a0<\/p>

laura.camacho@miranda-partners.com<\/a><\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

Descargar PDF: MI Public Affairs Chatter 260728 \u2013 ENG<\/a> MI Public Affairs Chatter 260728 \u2013 ESP<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mexico has long held, on paper at least, the power to block a foreign acquisition on national security grounds. What it has lacked is a concrete mechanism to<\/p>","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":19777,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-public-affairs-chatter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miranda-partners.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miranda-partners.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miranda-partners.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miranda-partners.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miranda-partners.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19776"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/miranda-partners.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19782,"href":"https:\/\/miranda-partners.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19776\/revisions\/19782"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miranda-partners.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miranda-partners.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miranda-partners.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miranda-partners.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}