Mexico’s beer exports fell 5% to $3.221 billion in the first half of 2026

Mexico’s beer exports fell in the first half of 2026, trimming about $170 million from one of the country’s most important foreign sales categories, according to data released Tuesday by Grupo Consultor de Mercados Agrícolas.

The consulting group said the customs value of Mexican beer exports reached $3.221 billion from January through June, down 5% from the same period a year earlier. Based on that rate, the comparable figure for the first half of 2025 was about $3.391 billion.

Even with the decline, beer remained Mexico’s leading agri-food export product, a sign of the category’s weight in the country’s farm and food trade. The drop stood out because it went against the broader direction of Mexican agri-food exports, which grew 1.7% in the same period. That left beer trailing the wider sector by 6.7 percentage points.

The figures were published with a display date of Aug. 11 by Grupo Consultor de Mercados Agrícolas, a firm that tracks agricultural and food markets in Mexico. The data refer to export value in U.S. dollars and not to physical shipments. The group did not publish volumes in liters or a breakdown by destination market.

That means the decline cannot be tied to a single cause from the information available. Without volume data, it is not possible to determine how much of the drop came from fewer shipments, lower prices, changes in product mix or currency effects. The estimated $170 million decrease is also based on a rounded annual percentage, so it should be read as an approximation rather than a precise accounting figure.

The setback matters because beer occupies a central place in Mexico’s export portfolio. In agri-food trade, it has long been one of the country’s most visible products abroad, and the source said it remained in first place despite the weaker first-half result. A decline in that category can have an outsized effect on the broader export picture even when other food and farm products are expanding.

The contrast with the rest of the agri-food sector is especially notable. While total agri-food exports posted modest growth, beer moved in the opposite direction. That divergence suggests the weakness was concentrated in a flagship product rather than spread evenly across Mexican food and agricultural exports.

The numbers also show the extent of the setback in simple terms. A 5% decline on a base of roughly $3.391 billion translates into about $170 million less in export revenue over six months. For a product that still leads the sector, that is a meaningful contraction, even if it does not change beer’s position at the top of the ranking.

Because the release does not include destination data, it does not show whether the decline was concentrated in one market or shared across several. It also does not indicate whether premium brands, mass-market labels or other segments were affected differently. For the same reason, the figures do not show whether exporters shipped less beer overall or whether the average value of what they sold abroad changed.

What the data do show clearly is that Mexico earned less from beer exports in the first half of the year than it did a year earlier, and that this happened while the country’s broader agri-food export sector still managed to grow. For producers, distributors and trade analysts, that gap is likely to draw attention because it affects the largest agri-food export product in the country.

The customs value measure used in the report reflects the declared value of exports at the border. It is a standard way to track trade performance, but it does not answer questions about costs, margins or final retail prices in destination countries. In a category as large as beer, shifts in the mix of products shipped abroad can change export value even when volumes are stable. Exchange-rate movements can also influence dollar-denominated totals.

For now, the first-half data leave a clear headline and several open questions. Beer brought in $3.221 billion in export value for Mexico from January to June, but that was 5% less than in the same stretch of 2025. The decline took place in the country’s top agri-food export and came at a time when agri-food exports as a whole still rose 1.7%, underscoring the unusual weakness of a product that remains central to Mexico’s trade in food and beverages.