FACTBOX: Drugs, trade and immigration focus of US-Mexican talks

(Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton travels to Mexico on Wednesday to meet Mexican President Felipe Calderon and other top officials.

Below are some facts about the U.S.-Mexican relationship and the fight against illegal drugs and associated violence.

THE DRUG WAR

* Mexican cartels smuggle some $40 billion worth of illegal drugs every year into the United States, the world's biggest market for narcotics. The drug gangs arm themselves with huge arsenals of smuggled U.S. weapons.

* Some 6,300 people were killed across Mexico last year in an escalation of turf wars and attacks on security forces by drug cartels armed with increasingly sophisticated smuggled U.S. guns and army weapons.

* Drug-related killings are continuing at a rapid rate, with roughly 800 people across Mexico dead so far this year according to Mexican media, and U.S. officials fear that more of the violence will spill across the 2,000-mile border.

* Washington on Tuesday announced a $184 million plan to fight the smuggling cartels and clamp down on cross-border smuggling. It would add 360 federal security agents to border posts and the Mexican interior and intensify inspections of southbound traffic. The plan drew a mixed response in the region.

* Since taking office in December 2006, Mexican President Felipe Calderon has staked his presidency on an army-led war on drug cartels, deploying 45,000 troops and spending more than $6.4 billion on the drug war in 2007 and 2008.

* About 90 percent of the cocaine consumed in the United States passes through Mexico. The country is also the largest foreign supplier of marijuana and methamphetamine to the United States, according to U.S. officials.

* The U.S. Congress earlier this month cut the amount of money it sets aside to help Mexico combat narcotics under the so-called Merida Initiative to $300 million in the current fiscal year from $400 million last year.

* Merida is a three-year, $1.4 billion package for Mexico and Central America pledged by former U.S. President George W. Bush during a visit to Merida, Mexico, in March 2007.

IMMIGRATION

* An estimated 12 million undocumented workers and their children live in the United States, slightly more than half of them Mexican.

* Obama won two-thirds of the Hispanic vote in the presidential election and many hope he will pass reforms to give more immigrants legal status.

* At least 4,500 Mexicans have died trying to cross illegally into the United States since Washington sharply increased border controls in 1994, according to immigrant rights groups based on data from the Mexican foreign ministry.

* Hundreds of thousands of Mexicans attempt to cross the border illegally each year, although tighter border security and the economic crisis has probably cut the number attempting the trip to some 500,000 from 2001's peak of about a million.

* There are about 1 million legal border crossings a day.

TRADE AND THE ECONOMY

* Mexico is the United States' second-largest export market after Canada and its third-largest total trade partner. Two-way U.S. trade with Mexico was $367.5 billion in 2008.

* Hundreds of factories stand along Mexico's border with the United States, and only China and Canada sell more goods to America.

* Since the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, took effect on Jan 1, 1994, U.S.-Mexico trade more than quadrupled to $367.5 billion in 2008.

* Mexico is a leading supplier of crude oil to the United States and U.S. carmakers have around a dozen factories in Mexico.

* Last week Mexico imposed higher tariffs on an estimated $2.4 billion worth of goods from the United States to retaliate against the U.S. Congress' decision to end a pilot program to allow Mexico trucks to operate in the United States. Washington hopes to have a proposal to resolve a trucking dispute with Mexico before he visits the country in mid-April.

(Reporting by Robin Emmott in Monterrey, Catherine Bremer in Mexico City and Doug Palmer and Arshad Mohammed in Washington; Editing by David Storey)