Much of nation’s output is shipped abroad under trade rules

In the border town of Tijuana, factories are working full tilt to pump out masks, protective gear and ventilator parts as global demand surges because of the coronavirus. And yet, locals say hospitals are desperately short of it all.

Mexico is the eighth-largest supplier of medical devices in the world, but much of it is shipped abroad. International trade rules, an aggressive scramble by wealthier nations to stock up and what critics call a lack of planning on Mexico’s part have drained the nation’s health system of supplies it will need to fight the pandemic.

It’s proving a deadly mix as cases start climbing in Tijuana, a medical-device making hub in Latin America.

Baja California state Governor Jaime Bonilla warned that doctors there are “dropping like flies” and threatened to shut down a ventilator-parts factory if it couldn’t find a way to bypass trade rules and supply nearby clinics. Videos on Twitter show health care workers lining up around town as they hunt for their own protective gear.

“The medical equipment producers don’t have anything for us,” said Faustino Ruvalcaba, a doctor in Tijuana who spent three decades working for the national health system known as IMSS before retiring. “All the output that occurs here isn’t for here — it’s for everywhere else.”

Asking Trump for Help

Ruvalcaba has taken it upon himself to hunt for supplies in San Diego and said he’s close to reaching a deal with a distributor for 1,000 medical-grade masks to help former colleagues. It’s not so different from what President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is doing. After repeatedly downplaying the seriousness of the disease up until late last month, Lopez Obrador personally asked Donald Trump for ventilators in a call.

…Most of the companies manufacturing medical supplies in Tijuana fall under Mexico’s maquiladora program, which means they benefit from tax breaks in exchange for assembling goods that must be exported.

Mexico has acknowledged that it continued sending supplies like face masks to China in February, only to have to buy some back at a higher cost. Government officials argue that they couldn’t stop companies from selling abroad without declaring a national emergency, which it couldn’t do because it didn’t yet have any cases. Diplomatically, not filling those orders would have hurt the nation’s ties abroad.