Here are the Top Countries for Nearshoring

A new ranking just released shows which Latin American countries are the best choices for U.S. importers to work with.  

“Tantalizing.” That’s what two experts on the entire nearshoring movement are calling the opportunities for companies on both sides of the action. In a new analysis for the online newsletter Americas Quarterly Felipe Larrain, former finance minister for Chile and now an economics professor at Universidad Católica de Chile and Carmen Cifuentes, also an with an economist from Universidad Católica de Chile, wrote about how countries in Latin America are now vying for what they called “the historic opportunity presented by this...regionalization of the global economy.”

Citing increased tensions between the U.S. and China, the pandemic, shipping disruptions off of the Red Sea and the war in Ukraine, the two experts said “reshoring and nearshoring strategies have emerged with unprecedented significance.”

Proximality to U.S. markets and geography are big factors in who will be the winners in nearshoring they said. Using data from the Inter-American Development Bank, “Mexico emerges as the leading destination due to its proximity to North America—with $35 billion of that expected boost potentially set for Mexico. But while the projected volume for Mexico is substantial, countries like Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Colombia also show potential as nearshoring destinations.”

However, using a variety of factors to evaluate which Latin American and Caribbean countries offered the most viability for nearshoring, they ranked them as follows: 1, Uruguay; 2, Chile; 3, Costa Rica; 4, Brazil; and 5, Panama. Other countries in the top ten included Jamaica, Peru and Columbia with Mexico ranked 11th. It should be noted that these rankings took into account all product categories, from automotive to energy, not just the apparel and home products are the focus of the Nearshoring Americas Expo.

Their full report on nearshoring is available at :

https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/nearshoring-in-latin-america-who-could-benefit-most/.