As a girl growing up in Tijuana and San Diego, Joanna Loaiza read adventure stories, swam laps at her local pool, and dreamed of one day becoming an engineer.
Today, the 22-year-old is preparing to graduate from CETYS Universidad in Tijuana with a degree in computer engineering. She’s learning about electronic chips, or semiconductors, the small devices essential for everything from cell phones to fighter jets.
“I love the science behind it all,” Loaiza told me after I visited her class last week. “We are all in contact with electronics, but people don’t normally get to see what’s inside.”
Joanna Loaiza, a senior at CETYS Universidad in Tijuana, talks Tuesday about her interest in engineering and semiconductors. / Photo by Sandra Dibble
As Baja California’s leaders strive to entice more advanced manufacturing to their state – from aerospace to semiconductors – their hopes are riding on students like Loaiza.
“The companies are already interviewing them,” said professor Nataly Medina, who teaches at the private university. “They’re interested specifically in the students who are taking this specialized course.”
The syllabus for Medina’s class was developed in collaboration with Qualcomm, the multinational semiconductor and telecommunications equipment company headquartered in San Diego. The company has been quietly operating a facility in Tijuana since last May. About 100 employees, mainly engineers, work out of an unmarked and fenced building in the sprawling Santa Fe housing development south of downtown.
The course is part of an effort by state leaders to position Baja California as a center for semiconductor assembly, testing and packaging following a worldwide chip shortage during the pandemic. The plan involves academia, industry and government, and aims to build a workforce of engineers, technicians and operators prepared to meet the needs of the companies such as Qualcomm.
“To find a low-cost, high reliability, prepared workforce just south of the border, logistically it makes all sorts of strategic sense for these companies to outsource to Baja,” said Dan Shunk, an emeritus engineering professor from Arizona State University who is advising the project. “And when you look at the caliber of individual that is necessary to run a test operation for Qualcomm, they have talent there that’s equivalent to any university in the world.”
Though the state is dreaming big, the presence of semiconductor companies at Mexico’s northern border is small compared to other sectors such as medical devices, aerospace and automotive. With the opening of Qualcomm’s facility in Tijuana, Baja California now has three semiconductor operations – including Irvine based Skyworks in Mexicali, and Germany’s Infineon in Tijuana.
A July 2024 “road map” of Mexico’s semiconductor industry by the United States-Mexico Foundation for Science – and funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development – identified Baja California, with its 60 industrial parks, as “one of the top prospective regions for semiconductors in Mexico.” But it added that “the state government and local companies must make major improvements to meet requirements for infrastructure, such as water, clean energy, and logistical hubs.”
Despite uncertainty under President Donald Trump, who has said he is considering tariffs on semiconductors, Baja California’s industry promoters say they are moving ahead as planned. Last month, they celebrated the graduation of 110 educators from 18 and technical schools from a course in semiconductors.
One of the state’s biggest strengths lies in its large pool of young people that could be trained for jobs in the semiconductor industry, said Juan Terrazas, head of engineering at CETYS. The university this year launched a master’s degree program in engineering with specialization in semiconductors.
As for the looming tariffs, “we’re waiting to see what’s going to happen,” Terrazas told me when we spoke last Friday. “But Mexico is not on pause. Mexico will invest its own resources to develop semiconductor infrastructure, independently of whether or not we have support from the United States.”
On Tuesday, I listened in as a group of 20 upper-level undergraduates, all of them bilingual in Spanish and English, gathered for their night class, “metrology and characterization of semiconductors.” I watched as professor Medina wrote out lines of formulas and students clustered in teams around laptops and circuit boards. The lesson of the day involved designing a small component making up a chip.
Osiel Gastelum, a 20-year-old majoring in computer engineering, explained some of the concepts behind the assignment: microprocessors, transistors, and VLSI design. Both Gastelum and his lab partner had few doubts about their chosen field.
“I will get to be a part of what comes next,” said Rene Lozano, 20, who was born in Chula Vista but raised in Tijuana. “I’ll be the one working to bring the new technology that is going to revolutionize something that affects our daily lives.”
Meanwhile: Tariffs Raise Anxiety in Tijuana’s Maquiladora Sector
The anxiety over President Trump’s threat of tariffs, however, was palpable among leaders of the maquiladora industry.
Wednesday morning leaders of the maquiladora industry – or export-oriented manufacturing centers – gathered over plates of huevos con machaca for their monthly breakfast meeting at Tijuana’s Grand Hotel. They discussed the possibility of tariffs.
“Obviously, this generates uncertainty, and uncertainty means you cannot plan for the medium or long-term,” said Federico Serrano, president of INDEX Zona Costa, the maquiladora association that encompasses Tijuana, Tecate, Rosarito Beach and Ensenada.
“We need to be more focused on keeping the investments that we have, that’s the main thing,” Serrano said.
Federico Serrano, president of INDEX Zona Costa, the maquiladora organization representing manufacturers in Tijuana, Tecate, Rosarito Beach and Ensenada, speaking with reporters at a breakfast on Wednesday morning in Tijuana. (Credit: INDEX)
Maquiladoras are the largest employer in Tijuana. In January of this year, Mexico’s Social Security Institute registered 279,196 workers in the maquiladora industry in Tijuana alone – a decline of more than 13,000 workers since the same time last year.
Some say the drop is a result of a restructuring of the maquiladora industry, as some areas lose employees while others gain positions. But INDEX leaders decried federal government policies on both sides of the border for hurting their industry.
Alfredo Dueñez, an INDEX board member and head of the medical device cluster, said any higher costs resulting from U.S. tariffs would be passed on to clients across the border. “Definitely hospitals, patients, doctors, health care professionals that use these devices would be affected,” he said.