Mexico—like Argentina, Brazil, and Chile—is a semi-industrialized nation. The nation is valuable in industrial resources, including petroleum and several metals. Mexico’s manufacturing output includes many basic goods, such as steel, machinery, and petrochemicals, as well as a wide range of consumer goods. Agriculture still provides more jobs than industry, however. Many farm families earn barely enough to survive, and many city dwellers are unable to find jobs.

Since the Revolution of 1910, Mexico's most famous economic achievement has been the sharp reduction of foreign ownership of the means of production while maintaining overall national growth. The economy is a combination of private, state, and mixed-capital enterprises.In addition, private capital is barred from investment in certain activities. Private capital interests, with a majority of shares owned by Mexican nationals, control most industrial manufacturing activities, while semiautonomous state corporations operate the petroleum industry, generate and distribute electricity, run the banks, and oversee the telephone and telegraph systems. The government also controls foreign capital investment, usually by prohibiting it from certain industries, such as insurance, petroleum, and forestry, or by limiting it to a minority interest in others, such as mining, transportation, broadcasting, and soft-drink production.

Mexico has a free market economy with a mixture of modern and outmoded industry and agriculture, increasingly controlled by the private sector. The number of state-owned enterprises in Mexico has fallen from more than 1,000 in 1982 to fewer than 200 in 2000. The ZEDILLO administration privatized and expanded competition in seaports, railroads, telecommunications, electricity, natural gas distribution, and airports. A strong export area helped to cushion the economy's decline in 1995 and led the recovery in 1996-2000. Private consumption became the leading driver of growth in 2000, accompanied by increased employment and higher real wages. Mexico still needs to overcome many structural problems as it strives to modernize its economy and raise living standards. Income distribution is very unequal, with the top 20% of income earners accounting for 55% of income. Trade with the US and Canada has tripled since NAFTA was implemented in 1994. Mexico completed free trade agreements with the EU, Israel, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala in 2000, and is pursuing additional trade agreements with countries in Latin America and Asia to lessen its dependence on the US.