An analytical framework for country‑of‑origin determination in Mexican‑assembled products within a nearshoring context
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37636/recit.v9n3e492Keywords:
Manufacturing, Substantial transformation, Tariffs, Country of origin, ProcurementAbstract
This paper analyzes the elements that US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) considers when determining a product’s country of origin. It also provides an in‑depth assessment of the manufacturing capabilities of potential suppliers for a weighing product, followed by a comparison of the results obtained through the Analytic Hierarchical Process (AHP) method. The findings show that a product assembled in Mexico that contains components from other countries can still be declared as “Mexican” if suppliers can demonstrate that the materials used to manufacture the product undergo a substantial transformation within Mexico. Therefore, transferring operations from China to Tijuana is feasible, and once the components from Mexican suppliers are approved by the company, there will be a 25% reduction in product cost due to the elimination of tariffs on exporting Chinese-made products to the US.
Downloads
References
[1] A. Lopez-Peña y R. Mora-Vega, “La Guerra Comercial Entre Estados Unidos y China: Un Enfrentamiento Más Allá De Los Aranceles”, InterSedes, vol. XX, no. 42, pp. 236-245, 2019, doi: 10.15517/isucr.v20i42.41853.
[2] A. Fernández Hernández y E. Bravo Benítez, “Potencialidad del nearshoring para el desarrollo económico de México”, Región Científica, vol. 2, no. 2, p. 2023105, 2023, doi: 10.58763/rc2023105.
[3] G. D. Ramírez Sierra, A. A. González Martínez, F. F. Villegas Rojas y M. A. Monroy Cruz, “Impacto del nearshoring en la actividad económica de México (2020-2023)”, Problemas del Desarrollo. Revista Latinoamericana de Economía, vol. 56, no. 220, pp. 125-152, 2025, doi: 10.22201/iiec.20078951e.2025.220.70230.
[4] J. Romero-Aguilar, “El nearshoring en México y su relación con China, Corea del Sur y Japón”, Revista Mexicana de Estudios sobre la Cuenca del Pacífico, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 31-54, 2023, doi: 10.53897/RevPortes.2024.02.02.
[5] T. Stringer y M. Ramírez-Melgarejo, “Nearshoring to Mexico and US Supply Chain Resilience as a Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic”, Findings, vol. 1, pp. 1-8, dic. 2023, doi: 10.32866/001c.91272.
[6] J. M. Peterson, “Substantial Transformation: The Worst Rule for Determining Origin of Goods - Except for All the Rest”, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, vol. 56, no. 4, pp. 1065-1097, 2023. [En línea]. Disponible en: https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/vjtl/vol56/iss4/3
[7] V. C. Jones y M. R. Rosenblum, “U.S. Customs and Border Protection: Trade Facilitation, Enforcement, and Security”, Congressional Research Service, Informe R43014, mar. 2013. [En línea]. Disponible en: https://ecommons.cornell.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/818204ef-3bf4-41d0-9fbf-4904dac87b3b/content
[8] S. A. Mack, “The country of origin, marking and application of Section 301 remedies of the FreshBase retail scale”, U.S. Customs & Border Protection, 2020. [En línea]. Disponible en: https://rulings.cbp.gov/search?term=8423.81.0030
[9] M. Ahmed y L. Hendry, “Supplier development literature review and key future research areas”, International Journal of Engineering and Technology Innovation, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 293-303, 2012.
[10] Y. Crama, J. Van De Klundert y F. C. R. Spieksma, “Production planning problems in printed circuit board assembly”, Discrete Applied Mathematics, vol. 123, nos. 1–3, pp. 339–361, 2002, doi: 10.1016/S0166-218X(01)00345-6.
[11] P. Witman, “The art and science of non-disclosure agreements”, Communications of the Association for Information Systems, vol. 16, pp. 259-270, 2005, doi: 10.17705/1CAIS.01611.
[12] E. M. Shehab y H. S. Abdalla, “Manufacturing cost modelling for concurrent product development”, Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 341–353, 2001, doi: 10.1016/S0736-5845(01)00009-6.
[13] T. Saaty, “Fundamentals the Analytic Hierarchy Process”, en The Analytic Hierarchy Process in Natural Resource and Environmental Decision Making, (Managing Forest Ecosystems, vol. 3), 2001, doi: 10.1007/978-94-015-9799-9_2.
[14] F. Dweiri, S. Kumar y V. Jain, “Designing an integrated AHP based decision support system for supplier selection in automotive industry”, Expert Systems with Applications, vol. 62, pp. 273-283, 2016, doi: 10.1016/j.eswa.2016.06.030.
[15] P. Bhutia y R. Phipon, “Application of AHP and TOPSIS method for supplier selection problem”, IOSR Journal of Engineering (IOSRJEN), vol. 2, no. 10, pp. 43-50, oct. 2012, doi: 10.9790/3021-021034350.
[16] P. Hruska, P. Prusa y D. Babic, “The use of AHP method for selection of supplier”, Transport, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 195-203, 2014, doi: 10.3846/16484142.2014.930928.
[17] G. Rajesh y P. Malliga, “Supplier Selection Based on AHP QFD Methodology”, Procedia Engineering, vol. 64, pp. 1283-1292, 2013, doi: 10.1016/j.proeng.2013.09.209.
[18] B. Mirza Murtanza, “Fuzzy-AHP application to country risk management”, American Business Review, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 109-116, 2003.
[19] A. Lohan, A. Ganguly y C. Kumar, “What’s foreign is better? A fuzzy AHP analysis to evaluate factors that influence foreign product choice among Indian consumers”, International Journal of the Analytic Hierarchy Process, vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 460-487, 2020, doi: 10.13033/ijahp.v12i3.743.
[20] F. Lambarraa-Lehnhardt, R. Ihle y H. Elyoubi, “How successful is origin labeling in a developing country context? Moroccan consumers’ preferences toward local products”, Sustainability, vol. 13, no. 15, Art. no. 8433, 2021, doi: 10.3390/su13158433.
[21] S. Amiri y E. Yousefi, “The comparative analysis of affecting factors on purchasing domestic and imported cars in the Iran Market – Using AHP Technique”, International Journal of Marketing Studies, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 142-150, 2011, doi: 10.5539/ijms.v3n2p142.
[22] T. L. Saaty, “How to make a decision: The analytic hierarchy process”, European Journal of Operational Research, vol. 48, no. 1, pp. 9–26, 1990, doi: 10.1016/0377-2217(90)90057-I.
[23] S. Hosseni y A. Khaled, “A Hybrid ensemble and AHP approach for resilient supplier selection”, Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 207-228, 2019, doi: 10.1007/s10845-016-1241-y.
[24] J. Mattoon, “Designing and developing technical curriculum: Finding the right subject matter expert”, Journal of STEM Teacher Education, vol. 42, no. 2, Art. no. 5, pp. 61-76, 2005. [En línea]. Disponible en: https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/jste/vol42/iss2/5
Published
Data Availability Statement
The content of this research has not been made public yet.
Issue
Section
Categories
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Francisco Ivan Franco Ortiz, Diana Sánchez-Partida, Patricia Cano-Olivos, Santiago Omar Caballero-Morales
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The authors who publish in this journal accept the following conditions:
The authors retain the copyright and assign to the journal the right of the first publication, with the work registered with the Creative Commons Attribution license 4.0, which allows third parties to use what is published as long as they mention the authorship of the work and the first publication in this magazine.
Authors may make other independent and additional contractual agreements for the non-exclusive distribution of the version of the article published in this journal (eg, include it in an institutional repository or publish it in a book) as long as they clearly indicate that the work it was first published in this magazine.
Authors are allowed and encouraged to share their work online (for example: in institutional repositories or personal web pages) before and during the manuscript submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, greater and more quick citation of published work (see The Effect of Open Access).
How to Cite
