President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is playing with fire and has an idea on the table that he has already proposed to his collaborators: request the exit of the Treaty between Mexico, the United States and Canada, known as the T-MEC, to pressure the United States and force him to accept its terms in the energy chapter. López Obrador was inspired by President Donald Trump, who, in order to pressure Congress to approve the T-MEC, which would replace the North American Free Trade Agreement that he considered a “disaster”, threatened to withdraw the United States from the agreement.
López Obrador’s statements were made after the Secretary of the Economy, Tatiana Clouthier, and the Secretary of Foreign Relations, Marcelo Ebrard, told him that the recent controversy with his business partners would not be won in an independent arbitration, due to the terms as it was drafted the T-MEC. The ambassador to China, Jesús Seade, who was an observer with voting and veto powers during the negotiations carried out by President Enrique Peña Nieto’s team, sent him a letter in which he reminds him in detail of the commitments his government made in the agreement.
The claim is found in Chapter 8 of the T-MEC, which refers to the energy sector. The United States and Canada claim that Mexico has violated several articles, but López Obrador maintains that it is false and that he would not accept anything that violates Mexican sovereignty. The draft of Chapter 8 underlines Mexican sovereignty over its natural resources, which is safeguarded. The accusations of his commercial partners are for the breach of what López Obrador accepted, through Seade, during the energy negotiations.
The draft is fully known to the president, so he knows – unless he has not understood it – that the agreement is transversal and has tangible commitments, such as the one that the energy reform is not reversed, revealed by Seade himself to the day following the conclusion of the negotiations. The main argument put forward by the US negotiating team was that it would be unacceptable for the new López Obrador government to want to treat them as “second class” partners, by trying to eliminate from the draft what it had already accepted in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement and with the Europeans. .
The discussion in the next consultations for the claim of the United States and Canada will be technical, but López Obrador politicized the negotiation and wants to deceive the Americans. Shortly after the complaint was made official, the president spoke with the United States ambassador, Ken Salazar, after which he said that commercial ties would not be broken, but on Friday, in confusing statements, he left open the possibility of leaving the T-MEC , and corrected later by pointing out that this would not benefit either of the two countries. It looked like a political schizophrenia, but it wasn’t.
In his thinking there are two planes, where the acceptance of the Biden Administration to the energy approach that López Obrador seeks to impose, goes through the request to repudiate the trade agreement. López Obrador believes that it is possible to play a gambit with the threat because the United States would be greatly affected in agricultural, industrial and technological matters, as well as in supply chains that have been a priority issue in bilateral talks for more than a year.
The pressure, which can also be interpreted as blackmail, is inspired by Trump’s actions, although López Obrador may be misthinking his strategy. If Trump had to make good on his threat, it would be a serious blow to the United States indeed, but it would still be the world’s leading economy. If Biden does not play the bluff of López Obrador, which is what it seems to be in the background, the Mexican productive apparatus would be disconnected from the North American and would lose the locomotive that gave it growth, well-being and stability since 1994.
Rejecting the T-MEC is not a decision taken, but the president gave instructions so that the conditions are built so that, in the event of a conflict, it has the national consensus. López Obrador is encouraged after reviewing last week an internal survey on energy reform and fuel prices, concluding that it was politically convenient for him to fight with the United States, with its hackneyed “nationalist” perspective and defense of what he calls “the Homeland”.
The results of the survey supported the announcement of responding to the demands of the United States and Canada on September 16, one of the great Mexican patriotic dates, for which a team was formed to contribute ideas, concepts and write the speech for that day, headed by his main political adviser, the spokesman Jesús Ramírez Cuevas, his second great political adviser, the monero of La Jornada, Rafael Barajas, “El Fisgón”, the controversial director of the Fondo de Cultura Económica, Taibo II, and the coordinator of advisers , Lazaro Cardenas.
The line on which the speech will deal is political, not technical; she is bellicose, not prudent. It is the quintessence of López Obrador, whose speech will probably take up his strong ideas, some widely known in the presidential repertoire, such as the “exploitation” and “looting” of foreign companies, and their alleged manipulation by opposition groups in Mexico.
The message, no matter how well it is received in some Mexican sectors and fuels nationalism, is not going to help Mexico in the negotiation, which, according to the Mexican officials themselves, does not have a capable team to lead the consultations, having been fired in the last three years practically the entire technical team that participated in the T-MEC meetings.
The objective conditions are quite unfavorable for Mexico, because effectively, it seems to be the consensus, agreements signed by López Obrador were violated. The subjective conditions, on the contrary, are highly favorable to the president, although for the purposes of the commercial agreement, they lack value. On September 16 there will probably be more radicalism in López Obrador’s message and less awareness of what his action means. The permanence in the T-MEC will continue to be up in the air.
#Andrés #ready #commit #suicide