Productive Policies to rebuild the Economy with Social and Environmental Sustainability Alicia Puyana Mutis and Reyes J. Morales

This essay explores analytical proposals, of recent industrial policies, and their relevance for Mexico, since the content and orientation of sectoral policies affect the entire country’s production, international and national exchanges, as well as social and territorial structures. That is why, as a starting point, it is important to analyze previous industrial policies to move forward in the theoretical and political debate, as the basis to formulate content and scope of new productive strategies for Mexico.

It must be noted that those policies, and the economic paradigms on which they are based, are not produced in neutral environments, but are rooted in Latin American political context and power structures, characterized by high property ownership inequality and, therefore, also income inequality.

Since the beginning of the 90s, the study of industrial policies has included reflections on changes in the economic conducting role of the State, as well as around structural change effects, such as for instance, fragmentation of productive processes and global value chain growth, promoting information technology revolutions, reducing transportation costs, almost zero interest rates and climate change. The 2008 financial crisis and, vehemently, the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as the Ukraine war and the genocide in Palestine, revealed problems of abandoning domestic production and supply of important health, environmental, food and economic stability products and privileging short- and medium-term cost benefit principles. All this vindicated Keynes’ (1933) national sovereignty postulates.

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