Alacero Summit 2026 held in Mexico City, Mexico, received opening remarks from Alacero president and Ternium chief executive officer Maximo Vedoya, and Raquel Buenrostro, Mexican Secretary of Anti Corruption and Good Governance, in front of top leaders in the steel industry from all of the Americas.
The driving theme was China's excess production and overcapacity, and its use by the Chinese to penetrate and even damage Latin American markets. Vedoya spoke of working hand in hand for years with Buenrostro for the ultimate outcome of protecting Mexican domestic production and was proud of the work.
In their opening comments, the advantages that Latin America possesses were emphasized, namely renewable energy, lithium copper reserves, ocean access, and distance from global conflicts. And yet, GDP growth was approximately 1.3 percent, whereas other countries were at 2 percent or higher. The cause of this, Vedoya said, is deindustrialization because of Chinese overcapacity and predatory export policies.
These effects are felt both in direct sales, and indirect sales, where steel is heavily used by other industries, such as imported automobiles, that use Chinese steel even if a country is not buying Chinese steel directly.
Buenrostro focused her speech on concrete Mexican legislative measures that have already resulted in promoting the use of domestic steel in 115 infrastructure projects. Estimated steel demand for these projects is at 700,000 tons, and national capacity can cover 91 percent of that number.
In an interview afterwards with SteelOrbis, Buenrostro explained how they plan to ensure that it is domestic steel used in infrastructure, saying “We have worked very hard through many strategic dialogues with the industry. That means not only the steelmakers, but also the intermediate companies, the construction firms and the structural fabricators. The goal was to see what our projects were, do the planning and work out what our steel demand was. We were able to identify 91 percent of the steel demand for our strategic projects. We published national content rules whose calculation method lets us incorporate national content in a very verifiable and very pragmatic way. This guarantees that the projects carry national content, from Mexican or regional production.”
In response to whether she would advocate for more tariffs to protect the domestic industry, Buenrostro said, “We are continually reviewing tariffs and seeing how our trade
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