Unequal Value Transfer from Mexico to the United States

Mateo Crossa

Utilising a Marxist perspective and the concept of unequal exchange, I describe here the enormous drain of wealth that Mexico has experienced as a manufacturing supplier to the U.S. market. Unlike the analyses that understand Mexico as a backward economy, low on the scale of production compared to the United States, my argument is based in the value-labor time perspective and demonstrates that the meagre wages of theworking class in Mexico do not correspond to productive backwardness, but to a vast value creation that is drained away systematically through unequal exchange mechanisms occurring in trade. The conversion of Mexico into an export platform supplying the United States has resulted in a huge theft of socially necessary labor time. As Samir Amin explained, “underdeveloped countries are so because they are superexploited and not because they are backward.”


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