According to Voice of America:
“Many countries have urged their citizens to avoid all non-essential travel to Mexico. Mexican Treasury Minister Agustin Carstens says the outbreak will cost the Mexican economy between 0.3 and 0.5 percent of its gross domestic product.”
The country of Mexico has two main products that fuel their economy. First is Oil and the United States is a big buyer of that oil, the second is tourism.
Earlier this year a study by the US Military was published warning that the government of Mexico is nearing collapse due to the “drug war violence”.
The Mexican economic outlook is directly tied to their security situation and given the fact that 92% of all exports of Mexican oil come to the US. In addition Mexico’s tourism industry was already taking a “hit” because of the drug violence and the outlook has taken a severe downturn because of the Mexican Governments inability to deal with the widespread violence. With the severe economic recession that has hit the US, less and less oil is being consumed (which is why oil prices are dropping to lower levels) and imported from our southern neighbors. The Mexican tourism trade was already in trouble with the “drug violence” that is rocking popular tourist destinations as well as kidnappings is forcing people to think about canceling or altering their destinations outside of Mexico.
Now comes the swine flu to further erode any tourism to the country and in fact many countries are not allowing travel from Mexico let alone to Mexico. If we were to shut the border now then it would further damage the desperately needed trade and commerce to the country trying to keep itself together.
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