Mexico was found to have broken international law, including the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), in its yearslong campaign against Birmingham-based Vulcan Materials, a now-public tribunal from the World Bank reports.
Their bizarre, hostile takeover began in 2022.
Mexico’s leftist government, using its domestic navy and police, seized Vulcan’s Punta Venado deep-water port at gunpoint in a 2023 pre-dawn raid caught on video, a year after then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador used the military to shut down a quarry that had been owned and operated by Vulcan since 1986.
López Obrador, who wanted the port for a cruise terminal and his Maya Train tourist railroad, then offered $385 million for property Vulcan valued at $1.9 billion.
After Vulcan turned down his lowball offers, he signed a decree in September 2024 illicitly declaring the land a protected natural area, despite its own environmental enforcement agency honoring the with six clean industry awards.
Today, the full decision found that Mexican regulators targeted the Alabama company, acted arbitrarily and in bad faith, and shut Vulcan out of its own defense in Mexican proceedings.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is telling her country that Mexico won. But Vulcan Materials Chairman Tom Hill told Bloomberg that “Mexico is 100% guilty” — and the fight is far from over.
Hill told Bloomberg the ruling confirms Mexican authorities acted arbitrarily and illegally and that Mexico’s environmental damage claims were untrue.
According to Vulcan, now that the Tribunal’s decision is public, Mexico can no longer hide behind a false account of what happened.
“The Tribunal found that Mexico violated international law, acted arbitrarily, without good faith and transparency, and denied Vulcan basic due process,” Vulcan said in a statement. “Mexico may continue to distort the decision, but it cannot change the facts.”
“This dispute extends far beyond Vulcan.
Mexico’s unlawful mistreatment of an American company raises fundamental questions about property rights, the rule of law, and whether Mexico can be trusted to honor its commitments that are essential for fostering bilateral economic prosperity.
Every U.S. business operating or considering an investment in Mexico should take notice: If the Mexican government can disregard Vulcan’s rights with impunity, no American company’s investment is secure.”
The arbitrators threw out Mexico’s environmental cover story. Vulcan said the tribunal ruled Mexico’s environmental counterclaims inadmissible.
The company planted more than 80,000 native trees on the property. After Mexico shut Vulcan down in the name of the environment, it let at least 12 nearby quarries keep running without the permits and environmental reviews it had demanded of Vulcan.
Alabama’s delegation in Washington has been engaged and aggressive with the situation since day one.
U.S. Senator Katie Britt (R-Montgomery) called the 2023 port seizure “shameful” and U.S. Reps. Gary Palmer (R-Hoover) and Mike Rogers (R-Saks) condemned it before Mexico offered to buy the port it had raided.
Britt and fellow U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Auburn) led a Senate letter across party lines to Mexico’s foreign secretary in May 2024, the senators branded the protected-area designation an expropriation that July.
Alabama’s U.S. House members issued a joint demand that Mexico reverse course in August.
Britt and Tuberville joined U.S. Senator Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) in introducing the Defending American Property Abroad Act the next month, and the House passed its own version with vast support from both Republicans and Democrats.
The bill, which would let the president bar vessels that use expropriated port infrastructure from U.S. ports, is pending in the Senate.
Grayson Everett is the editor in chief of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on X @Grayson270.
