“Wine and liquor industry calls for tax reform to align Mexico with T-MEC partners”
El Economista reports:
“Before the start of talks related to the T-MEC, the Commission for the Wine and Liquor Industry (CIVyL) calls for the adoption in Mexico of a tax scheme similar to that of the United States and Canada, its main trading partners.
It highlights the need to modernize the scheme with which Mexico taxes alcoholic beverages to move from the current model that charges the tax according to the price of the product -ad valorem- to one that determines it according to the amount of pure alcohol of each drink”
Assessment
The renewed push by CIVyL to reform Mexico’s alcohol tax system shows how alcohol industry actors use every available policy moment to advance their tax agenda, even when the connection is weak at best. CIVyL is an alcohol industry front group, with global corporate giants such as Pernod Ricard, Diageo, and Bacardi among its paying members. The upcoming trade talks within T-MEC (the US, Mexico and Canada trade agreement that replaced NAFTA in 2020) are unrelated to domestic alcohol excise policy, yet the alcohol industry is invoking them to push for alcohol tax cuts and to reinsert its proposal into the policy debate.
The CIVYL proposal focuses on replacing Mexico’s ad valorem alcohol tax system with a specific tax. While alcohol-content–based taxation is grounded in evidence and in principle an international best practice, the rates that Big Alcohol lobbyists promote would effectively lower alcohol taxes in Mexico. This would increase alcohol affordability, increase alcohol consumption, and harm in Mexican families and communities but also boost profits for multinational alcohol giants.
By shifting attention to trade alignment, the alcohol industry diverts the debate away from the central question of tax levels and their role in protecting public health. Alcohol taxation remains a sovereign fiscal and health policy tool and does not require trade alignment to be legitimate or effective.
A shift to alcohol-content–based taxation can support better health outcomes only if rates are set at levels that reduce affordability to lower population-level alcohol consumption. There is an opportunity for alcohol policy advocates to challenge misleading narratives, to expose the conflict of interest underpinning the alcohol lobby’s narratives, and to make the case for modern, evidence-based alcohol taxation in line with international standards as part of a broader government strategy to prevent and reduce alcohol harm.