Mexico & Nafta - June 2008 (ISSN 1741-444X)

On 22 May Barack Obama, who will almost certainly be the Democratic party's presidential candidate in November, made his first big policy statement on Latin America. Obama has done badly with Hispanics in the Democratic primaries and needs to address their interests if he is to win in November.

Obama has never been to Latin America. His policies on the region are becoming more orthodox: he has stepped back, for example, from a vague commitment to rethink US policy towards President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. This retreat is partly a function of the audience Obama was addressing. On 22 May he was speaking in Miami to Cuban-American audience. Cuban-Americans are particularly hostile to Chávez because of his support for the Castro brothers in Cuba.

Obama called for a change in the US policies to Cuba which, he said, had failed for 50 years. He stopped short of calling for a lifting of the trade embargo, though he did call for an easing of the restrictions (imposed by President George W Bush) which limit Cuban Americans' visits and remittances to Cuba.

The big change announced by Obama was his recognition that US policy should not just favour Latin America's elites. This appears to mean that he will put more emphasis on human and labour rights in policies towards the region.

Obama was, however, extremely coy about his ideas for improving relations with Mexico. He repeated his statement that Nafta needed “fixing". He did not elaborate on what this meant: Obama's critics fear that he has a strong protectionist bent, though his rhetoric in the primaries has been significantly less protectionist than that of his main rival, Hillary Clinton.

Obama said virtually nothing about immigration reform, which is a key issue for Mexico. Nor did he say anything significant about the Iniciativa Mérida. He implied that amount of money the US was committing under the scheme would not be enough to change the situation in Mexico decisively. He then argued that the US should commit more money to anti-poverty programmes in Latin America.

Obama did say that he would restore the position of Special Envoy for Latin America. The position was annulled by President George W Bush. Obama also said that he would hold annual summits with Latin American presidents. Currently US-Latin America presidential summits occur every three or four years.

On energy, Obama said that he wanted to learn more about Brazil's ethanol programme and to develop nuclear energy programmes with Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Chile.