TECH - Borderlands Mexico: Widening Technology Gap a Threat to US-Mexico Trade Experts Say | Benzinga
Panacea, which also has offices in Laredo, Texas, and Mexico City, is a technology company focused on digital innovation and incubation for the logistics industry.
"Unfortunately, I've seen that the gap between the technology that is available and what people are doing with technology, the gap is not closing; at least here in Mexico, that gap is growing" Manuel Farias Martinez, a Monterrey, Mexico-based consultant for Panacea, told FreightWaves. "Instead of people learning what they can do, how to exploit technology, they are not doing it."
Alaster Love, chief technology officer at Panacea, said companies that don't adopt tools such as ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot, or carriers that are not using smart cameras equipped with facial recognition technology, could lose business to firms that invest in them.
"Commercial transportation is a category that is often stereotyped as a laggard in terms of technology adoption" said Love, who is based in Laredo. "Most carriers, logistics professionals are just so busy keeping the lights on that they can't really start to think about innovation in the future."
Mexico replaced China as the top U.S. trading partner in 2023, with trade between the U.S. and Mexico totaling $798 billion last year. In the first quarter of 2024, trade between Mexico and the U.S. totaled $200.1 billion, a 1.7% year-over-year increase.
As trade between the U.S. and Mexico expands, digital services between the two countries are also expected to grow, according to a recent study by New York-based law firm White & Case LLP titled "The Rise of Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and the Next Generation of International Rules Governing Cross-Border Data Flows and Digital Trade."
"The digital economy in the U.S. has increased from $1.3 trillion in 2010 to $2.4 trillion in 2021, with services such as e-commerce, cloud services, telecommunications and internet and data services accounting for nearly two-thirds of this total" the study said. "International trade in the digital economy has grown at a similar speed. U.S. two-way trade in information and communication technology services grew from $90 billion in 2010 to $147 billion in 2021.
"Cross-border data flows have played a critical role in enabling this growth, and data volumes have increased exponentially during the same time period. Companies continue to ...