If we’re serious about painting the North American future we keep talking about — the one where Mexico supercharges U.S. growth, nearshoring turns into a continental manufacturing renaissance and we stop worrying about distant supply chains — then we have to start where everything else begins: energy.
Without it, there are no factories, no AI servers, no data centers, no EVs, no production, no jobs, no growth. Nada.
When we look at what’s happening in the Middle East and its implications for Asia, Europe and basically the entire planet, we’re facing a classic “tsunami moment.” The ocean pulls way back, the beach looks weirdly inviting and most people just stand there taking selfies instead of running for higher ground.
That’s exactly where we are with global energy. Tomas Pueyo laid it out in chilling detail: by 2050, the Middle East will be a geopolitical mess — civil wars in Iran, Kurdish breakaways, Iraqi splintering, Azerbaijan in flames — because the oil that funded everything is drying up. Europe and Asia, still hooked on those distant barrels, are about to get slammed (really, read Mr. Pueyo here). And if Mexico sits on its hands, Venezuela and Guyana (with their own massive reserves) will happily step in and become the region’s new energy and petro-suppliers.
Wake-up call, folks. The ocean is already receding.
But here’s the beautiful part: North America doesn’t have to play that game. We have something no other bloc can match: genuine regional complementarity that feels almost unfair.
The United States sits on world-leading natural gas production and enough reserves to power domestic needs and exports for decades. Canada holds the planet’s third-largest proven oil reserves. And Mexico? NREL’s numbers still blow my mind: more than 28,000 GW of technical renewable capacity across solar, wind, geothermal, and hydro. That’s enough to meet Mexico’s electricity needs a hundred times over. Put those three together and you get a perfectly balanced continental battery: U.S. gas for baseload reliability, Canadian oil for the heavy stuff, Mexican sunshine and wind for the cheap, scalable, zero-fuel-cost future.
Energy security? Check. Industrial competitiveness? Check. A real energy transition that doesn’t bankrupt anyone? Double check.
We’re already living the first draft of this story, and it’s working better than most people admit. Mexico imports 73% of its natural gas — 99% of that via pipeline straight from Texas. Those pipelines have grown 8.3% a year since Trump’s first term. Flip the script, and Mexico is America’s top export market for petroleum products, natural gas, refined fuels, and the fourth-biggest buyer of upstream oil-and-gas equipment. Texas producers literally need Mexican demand to keep associated-gas prices from cratering; U.S. liquefaction capacity covers only 9.5% of production. The old “U.S. deficit with Mexico” narrative? It flipped into a surplus years ago. You can read more about this in my previous essay on energy.
Opinion: Could Mexico make America great again? The energy equation
The Ember reports make the math deliciously clear.
Hitting 45% clean electricity by 2030 would cut Mexico’s gas imports for power generation by 20% and save US $1.6 billion a year. Falling battery prices turn Mexico’s world-class sunshine into dispatchable power that can replace imported U.S. gas entirely in many places.
Cheaper, cleaner energy in Mexico makes every nearshored factory more competitive. It powers semiconductor plants (Foxconn/Nvidia’s giant Guadalajara server assembly), the auto industry and the exploding data-center boom (Microsoft’s $1.3 billion, AWS’s $5 billion, ODATA’s 400 MW campus). Mexico needs energy capital investment ASAP!
Energy is the multiplier for everything else in our series. Dr. Luis de la Calle brings the argument home. He constantly highlights how Asia knows this game cold: they do 65% of their intermediate-goods trade inside the region; we’re stuck at 48%. If we want to compete with Asia, we must integrate vertically as a region. Energy is one of the three non-negotiable conditions (along with logistics and talent) for making that happen.
Without competitive, abundant, regionally sourced power, the rules-of-origin incentives in USMCA stay half-baked — even counterproductive. Asia’s dense energy-and-supply web keeps factories humming at low cost. We have the pipelines, the complementary resources, the rulebook and the geography — we just haven’t flipped the switch to “continental platform” yet.
That brings us to the rulebook itself: USMCA, our legal backbone. The agreement already treats energy trade as a complementary system, not a zero-sum fight. But Mexico’s latest energy reform has created real ambiguity in interpretation, and investors hate ambiguity more than they hate tariffs.
We need to use the 2026 review to lock in clarity: make sure the recent Mexican reforms align with USMCA, fast-track cross-border electricity and renewable projects and create joint incentives for transmission and distribution upgrades.
If Mexico sends the right messages on energy in the coming months, investment flows to the region will be unprecedented.
Mexico doesn’t just want to be the U.S.’s cheap assembly shop; it wants to be the reliable, high-value enabler that attracts the full nearshoring wave. That requires growing the energy matrix, hardening reliability and building the wires that let electrons flow both ways without drama.
So here’s the vision — the “Regional Utopia” part we keep circling back to in this essay series.
Imagine a true North American energy platform: pipelines and power lines that treat the border like an extension cord, Mexican solar-plus-batteries firming up U.S. grids during peak demand, joint LNG terminals turning our combined gas into a global export weapon and harmonized rules that make investment boringly predictable. Factories on both sides of the border run on the cheapest, cleanest electrons anywhere. American families pay lower prices at the pump and on their electric bills (American politicians, remember: “It’s the economy, stupid” — this actually yields votes). Mexican communities get jobs, tax revenue and a diversified economy that doesn’t rise and fall with oil alone.
It is obvious, besides, that energy cooperation strengthens U.S. economic and national security.
While the rest of the world fights over dwindling barrels and geopolitical tsunamis, North America builds something bigger: a shared energy future where the only “petrostate” left standing is the whole continent, humming along on solar, gas, wind, and sheer integration swagger. The powerhouse doesn’t need more power — it needs the right kind, sourced together, governed together, and grown together.
That’s not a utopian daydream. It’s the logical next chapter of the story we’ve already started writing. The documents are there, the pipelines are built, the money is ready and the 2026 USMCA review is the perfect moment to hit “publish.” Let’s not waste it.
Pedro Casas Alatriste is the Executive Vice President and CEO of the American Chamber of Commerce of Mexico (AmCham). Previously, he has been the Director of Research and Public Policy at the US-Mexico Foundation in Washington, D.C. and the Coordinator of International Affairs at the Business Coordinating Council (CCE). He has also served as a consultant to the Inter-American Development Bank. Follow his Substack here.
