In early January, during one of her daily morning press conferences, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced an audacious goal. When the World Cup arrives at Mexico City’s Azteca Stadium next summer, she’ll drive up to greet the crowds in a tiny electric vehicle made almost entirely in Mexico. Spearheaded by the newly created Ministry of Science, Humanities, Technology, and Innovation, the Olinia project aims to eventually produce three models that will sell for between $4,500 and $7,500. Relying on the country’s sizable auto industry, Olinia vehicles are intended to reduce pollution, expand mobility options for the 70 percent of Mexicans who live in cities, and compete with affordable Chinese brands, whose dealerships are rapidly proliferating around the country.

Many in the United States have become familiar with Sheinbaum as an “anti-Trump” who deftly parries White House bluster. As Democrats search for their own answers for how to beat Trump, Sheinbaum’s domestic agenda deserves as much attention as her diplomacy. Her political party, Morena, was reelected by a landslide last June. Her predecessor’s approval rating never dropped below 60 percent; hers is currently soaring north of 80. With one of the world’s strongest electoral mandates, Sheinbaum’s government is rolling out an industrial policy that shares many of the same goals as those championed by the Biden administration: building up domestic supply chains, creating jobs, and competing in the twenty-first century’s most important growth industries. What modest progress Democrats made toward those goals has proved fragile. They lost the White House and Congress, and the GOP is now poised to dismantle Biden’s trademark achievements—not to mention the administrative state as we know it. Sheinbaum, meanwhile, has more than five years left to continue the transformative political project begun by her party when it first won the presidency in 2018.

Bidenomics’ boosters spoke in lofty terms about how the last administration heralded an end to neoliberalism. If anyone can claim the mantle of “post-neoliberalism,” however, it’s Morena. Amid endless postmortems about where Democrats went wrong, it might be worth looking beyond our borders for inspiration. What is Morena doing that Democrats couldn’t, and what can we learn from Sheinbaum’s approach?

Launched in January, Plan Mexico offers a sweeping vision for sustainable development. By 2030, it aims........

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