LAREDO, Texas - In his introduction to the 2025 edition of "Crossing Paths: Insights into U.S. International Trade," Daniel Covarrubias pointed out that in 1994, three North American nations made a wager: that reducing barriers between their economies would generate shared prosperity.
The director of the Texas Center for Border Economic and Enterprise Development at Texas A&M International University in Laredo, said that over three decades, that wager paid off.
“By 2024, trilateral trade under NAFTA and its successor, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), had grown from $265 billion to $1.6 trillion annually. Supply chains spanning the continent became the backbone of automotive manufacturing, electronics assembly, energy distribution, and agricultural trade,” Covarrubias wrote.
He noted that the Port Laredo, situated at the geographic and economic center of this integration, processed $340 billion in trade value in 2024 alone, making it the busiest port of entry in the United States.
“Then 2025 happened,” Covarrubias said. “Three tariff announcements between January and June disrupted the assumptions underlying North American commerce.”
A 25 percent tariff on all products from Mexico, followed by targeted levies on vehicles, auto parts, aluminum, iron, and steel, “sent shockwaves through the integrated manufacturing networks that had taken decades to build,” Covarrubias explained.
“Vehicle imports from Mexico through Port Laredo fell by $4.1 billion in the first half of the year. Metals imports dropped 13.6 percent. The ripple effects extended beyond trade values into freight income, drayage operations, warehousing activity, and brokerage services across the Los Dos Laredos corridor.”
Covarrubias said the 40-page 2025 edition of Crossing Paths: Insights into U.S. International Trade documents this inflection point. It was penned by Covarrubias and Heleodoro Lozano.
“Published by the Texas Center for Border Economic and Enterprise Development (TCBEED) at Texas A&M International University, the series tracked trade dynamics as they unfolded, from the detailed mechanics of port operations and commodity flows to the systemic disruptions caused by shifting trade policy, and finally to institutional proposals designed to strengthen North American competitiveness for the next generation.”
Covarrubias said the compilation organizes the year’s ten editions into a three-part narrative arc.
Here is conclusion of Covarrubias and Lozano:
From Architecture to Agency
The ten editions of the 2025 Crossing Paths compilation trace a deliberate arc. They begin by documenting what North American trade integration has built: a $1.6 trillion economic relationship, a $340 billion gateway at Port Laredo, supply chains in which automotive components cross the border eight times before reaching a showroom, and infrastructure handling 23 million bridge crossings annually. This is not a natural phenomenon. It is the product of thirty years of policy decisions, infrastructure investments, workforce development, and business strategy.
The year’s analysis then documents what happened when that architecture was tested. Three tariff announcements between January and June 2025 disrupted trade flows across two of the most integrated sectors, automotive and metals, reducing bilateral trade by nearly $5 billion in six months. The impacts extended beyond commodity values into the supply chain services economy, contracting drayage, warehousing, brokerage, and freight activity across the Los Dos Laredos corridor. The tariff analysis demonstrated that the costs of disruption exceeded the revenue from tariff collection, producing a net contraction in economic activity.
The final three editions respond to this disruption not with alarm but with institutional design. The Binational Customs Agency proposes to eliminate the operational disconnect between U.S. and Mexican customs systems that adds cost and friction to every one of the 6.1 million annual truck crossings. NADICI proposes to build the digital infrastructure required for a continent generating $1.93 trillion in annual trade to operate with the efficiency and security that modern supply chains demand. The North American Industrial Coordination Council proposes to address the strategic gap, the absence of a mechanism for the three USMCA nations to coordinate their industrial capabilities against competitors that increasingly organize their economies along regional lines.
These three proposals share a common premise: that the era of relying solely on tariff liberalization to drive North American integration has ended. The trade infrastructure built under NAFTA and USMCA is extraordinary, but it lacks the institutional capacity to manage disruptions, coordinate strategy, or adapt to an increasingly global economy shaped by digital systems, industrial policy, and geopolitical competition. The July 2026 USMCA joint review provides a natural window for advancing institutional reforms.
Key Themes Across 2025
Several cross-cutting themes emerge from the year’s analysis. First, concentration and vulnerability are two sides of the same coin. Port Laredo’s dominance as the top U.S. port of entry reflects extraordinary logistical efficiency, but it also means that 40 percent of U.S.-Mexico trade flows through a single gateway. The automotive sector’s deep cross-border integration enables world-class manufacturing competitiveness, but it also means that tariffs on components disrupt production systems across multiple states and countries. Concentration generates efficiency; it also demands institutional safeguards.
Second, data-driven analysis reveals impacts that aggregate statistics conceal. The tariff analysis’s innovation was not in reporting trade declines; those numbers were publicly available, but in tracing how a $503 million decline in metals imports through Port Laredo translated into specific reductions in drayage income, warehousing activity, and brokerage revenue. This granular approach demonstrates that trade policy affects real economic actors in measurable ways, providing information essential for policymakers, community leaders, and business operators.
Third, physical and digital infrastructure must evolve together. Port Laredo’s bridge system handles 19,461 truck crossings per day on infrastructure that has not expanded proportionally to demand. Simultaneously, the customs systems on both sides of the border cannot exchange data in real time. Building additional bridge lanes without modernizing digital processing would result in longer queues at the inspection station. Modernizing digital systems without expanding physical capacity would produce faster processing in congested approach roads. The two investments must proceed in tandem.
Fourth, North American competitiveness increasingly depends on institutional capacity rather than on market access alone. The United States lags behind strategic competitors in 57 of 64 critical technologies. Canada possesses critical mineral reserves essential for advanced manufacturing. Mexico offers manufacturing scale, a young workforce, and proximity to the world’s largest consumer market.
Each nation’s assets are significant in themselves; when coordinated deliberately, they constitute one of the world’s most formidable economic combinations. But deliberate coordination requires institutions that do not yet exist.
Looking Forward
The 2025 edition of Crossing Paths concludes at a moment of consequence. The USMCA joint review scheduled for July 2026 offers the most significant opportunity in a generation to update the institutional framework governing North American trade. The three proposals presented in this compilation, the BCA, NADICI, and NAICC, are designed to be actionable within that review process, offering concrete institutional designs rather than abstract aspirations.
The work of documenting North American trade dynamics continues. Each edition adds evidence to the case that this trade relationship, the largest trilateral commerce in the world, deserves institutional architecture commensurate with its scale and significance. Through data-driven storytelling, Crossing Paths will continue to highlight the paths these nations share and the institutional choices that will determine whether those paths lead to shared prosperity or fragmented competition.
The data is clear. The architecture is documented. The vulnerabilities are measured. The proposals are on the table. What remains is the collective resolve to build institutions worthy of the economic integration North America has already achieved.
