Mexicali’s maquiladora sector posted a historic year in 2025, with exports climbing 9.8% to reach 75.35 billion pesos ($4.2 billion USD), the highest figure since INEGI, Mexico’s national statistics agency, began tracking city-level trade data. The growth came even as U.S. tariff threats loomed over cross-border commerce throughout the year.
Mayor Norma Bustamante credited the surge to strong demand from U.S. buyers in the aerospace and automotive sectors, according to La Jornada Baja California. The United States remains Mexicali’s primary trading partner by a wide margin. The maquila sector now directly employs 80,521 workers in the city, and Bustamante said outsourcing has been nearly eliminated from the industry’s labor practices.
Mexicali’s performance mirrors a national trend. Mexico set an all-time export record of $664.84 billion USD in 2025, with Mexican exports to the U.S. growing more than 8% year over year despite sectoral tariffs on steel, aluminum, and other goods not covered by the USMCA trade agreement. The border city’s aerospace cluster, which includes plants operated by Honeywell, Goodrich, and several Tier 1 suppliers, has been a particular bright spot as U.S. defense and commercial aviation spending remained elevated.
The picture is not without risk. Trade lawyers have warned that maquiladoras operating under Mexico’s IMMEX program do not enjoy blanket exemptions from import duties, and the destination country of finished goods matters for tariff exposure. Firms have also grown cautious about expansion amid unpredictable U.S. trade policy, according to Brookings Institution analysis of USMCA’s effects on border manufacturing.
For Mexicali’s economy, maquiladoras remain the engine. The city’s industrial parks, concentrated along Boulevard Lázaro Cárdenas and in the Cachanilla industrial zone south of the border crossing, house hundreds of plants that feed components into U.S. supply chains daily. The 80,000-plus direct jobs represent a significant share of formal employment in a metro area of roughly 1.1 million people, and the sector supports tens of thousands more indirect positions in services, logistics, and housing.