Politics: Government-business relationship—the schizophrenia
Claudia Sheinbaum faces the challenge of turning private investment into a reality to ensure the sustainability of the 4T project, which requires solid and growing public finances to maintain social programs and fund the public works that symbolize the government. The problem stems from the deep rift that López Obrador created between the government and the private sector by prioritizing the State over the market, intervening in strategic sectors (particularly energy), implementing an aggressive tax policy, eliminating autonomous regulatory bodies, and making economic decisions based on political criteria, for example, the cancellation of the new Mexico City airport.
This distancing generated growing though unspoken mistrust, which translated into reduced private investment and the lowest average annual economic growth of the last six presidential terms between 2019 and 2024. Aware of the problem, Sheinbaum presented the Mexico Plan in January 2025, a strategy for industrialization and shared prosperity that included actions in nine economic sectors and the creation of a Government-Business Advisory Council. However, the plan was considered overly ambitious and optimistic, with unfeasible goals, lack of budgetary support, strong government intervention, and internal contradictions.
Beyond its technical shortcomings, the lack of trust from the business community was not addressed—a distrust that had been aggravated by the judicial reform approved in the fall of 2024. Although Sheinbaum promised macroeconomic stability, fiscal discipline, cooperation between the State and businesses with the preeminence of the State, limited private participation in energy, greater security, and wage increases, neither the Mexico Plan nor her discourse of moderation managed to improve business confidence or private gross fixed investment during 2025. This is clear from the low confidence levels seen in the manufacturing, commerce, and construction sectors.
In 2026, faced with the lack of results, she announced a second effort: the Infrastructure Investment Plan for Development with Welfare, amounting to 5.6 trillion pesos between 2026 and 2030, together with the National Investment Council led by Carlos Slim. Nevertheless, this new plan presents similar viability problems and is accompanied by government actions that deepen mistrust, such as the revocation of authorizations for tax-deductible donations to civil society organizations and the push for electoral reform.
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