Mexico’s central bank raised interest rates on Thursday in an attempt to shore up the country’s currency, which has collapsed following Donald Trump’s election as US president.



The Banco de México raised its key interest rate by 0.5% to 5.25% as it warned that the global economy had become “more complex” as a “consequence of the electoral process carried out in the United States and its result”. The increase in the rate from 4.75-5.25% takes it to its highest since 2009.

It is the third time this year that Mexico has raised interest rates, including a hike in September in response to Trump’s surge in the polls ahead of the election.

The peso plunged 13% against the dollar in the days following the US election, as traders feared the implications of a Trump presidency. The currency, which had recovered to 10% down, fell about 1% on Thursday following the central bank’s announcement. The peso is the second-worst performing currency in the world, after the pound which collapsed following Britain’s vote in June to leave the European Union.

Trump has threatened to deport millions of “illegal” Mexican immigrants from the US, build a wall along the frontier and pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). More than 80% of Mexico’s exports head north of the border to the US or Canada.

Annual trade between the two neighbours is worth over $500bn, equalling $1.6bn of trading each day. Mexican exports to the US have jumped six-fold since Nafta took effect in 1994, to $320bn last year. Almost 80% of Mexican exports head north of the border.

The leaders of Mexico and Canada are to this weekend hold emergency talks on the impact of a Trump presidency on their national economies. Prime minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto will meet on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific regional summit in Lima, Peru, and intend to speak to each other more frequently about their Nafta strategy in the months to come, a source told Reuters.

Canadian officials say that if Trump walks away from Nafta, Canada could fall back on an earlier 1984 free trade deal with the United States. There are no such options for Mexico.



“It’s still difficult to asses the specifics that will define the economic policies of the US regarding the bilateral relation with Mexico from 2017, but the implicit risks have had an important impact on the local financial markets,” Banco de México said in its statement.

Following Trump’s triumph several investment banks have cut their 2017 Mexican growth forecasts from 2.5% to range of between 1.7% and 1.9%. The finance ministry has maintained its estimate of 2% to 3% growth next year.