Industrial Clusters and Nearshoring: A Cross-Sectoral Analysis of Mexico’s Competitive Advantage

Abstract

The research aims to estimate the significance of industry areas in making Mexico a better location for businesses from around the world to relocate their operations. The study looks at secondary data from nine global companies in the tech, airplane, car, and consumer goods fields using a qualitative-exploratory method. Companies want to know how perks from the state level work in real groups. When people in the same clique work together, share knowledge, and link the supply line, they save money. In the long run, this helps Mexico reach its goals. Furthermore, the USMCA enhances Mexico’s integration with the US market. The study also talks about some major issues, including a severe lack of STEM talent (country figures show that only about 35% of Mexican graduates focus on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) areas, which is not enough to meet the needs of the cluster) and ongoing problems with infrastructure that keep people from reaching their full potential. Porter’s diamond model and the global value chain (GVC) theory are used in this study to back up what has already been said about nearshoring. It also shows that the amount of cluster growth for each company is very different. If Mexico wants to move up in the GVC chart, it needs to change how its government works. These changes should be read by small and medium-sized businesses. People who own the houses should fix them up and teach their workers new things. The research works close to home lets us plan trips to places that are still growing. This research learned things from this study that modern society can use beyond school.

Received: 19 April 2025| Revised: 2 December 2025 | Accepted: 23 December 2025

Conflicts of Interest

The author declares that he has no conflicts of interest to this work.

Data Availability Statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.

Author Contribution Statement

Gabriel Silva-Atencio: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Investigation, Resources, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition.