Mexico & Nafta - January 2009 (ISSN 1741-444X)

On 12 January Mexico's president, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, entertained the US president-elect, Barack Obama, with a lunch at the Instituto Cultural de México in Washington, DC. To the surprise of the Mexicans, the Obama team claimed that the key issue in the meeting was Obama's proposal to Calderón to “upgrade" the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta).

The Mexican delegation, which included the foreign minister, Patricia Espinosa, the interior minister, Fernando Francisco Gómez-Mont Urueta, and the finance minister, Agustí­n Carstens, was taken aback by Obama's move on Nafta. They should not have been. Obama promised during the election campaign, that when he became president that   he “would immediately call the president of Mexico, the president of Canada [sic] to try to amend Nafta because I think that we can get labour agreements in that agreement right now."

Calderón warned Obama several times, both before and after the election, against tinkering with the Nafta treaty. Calderón's official statement on his meeting with Obama did not mention Obama's proposal to “upgrade" Nafta. Indeed, neither man mentioned Nafta when they made some brief comments after the lunch.

The comment about Obama's ambitions on Nafta came from his official spokesman, Robert Gibbs. He said that Obama had proposed setting up a consultative group of US and Mexican officials to discuss key bilateral issues such as Nafta, energy and infrastructure. A Mexican official accompanying Calderón commented that he did not understand what “upgrade" would mean in practice.

Whether Obama will reopen Nafta is far from certain, but his decision to raise the prospect of doing so shows that, for all his rhetoric, Obama's priority in relations with Latin America is shoring up his domestic support. US trade unions are unhappy about cheap labour competition from Mexico and Obama is appeasing them by threatening to reopen the accord.

Mexico's big fear is that, under the Nafta treaty, any of the three signatories (the US, Mexico and Canada) can withdraw simply by giving six months' notice.  

Mexico was pleased, however, that Obama met Calderón on what is effectively Mexican soil. Obama's aides were quick to confirm that Mexico's presidential guard was responsible, along with the US Secret Service, for the president-elect's security. This underlines the change from President George W. Bush, who upset Chile (and the rest of Latin America) by insisting on bringing his own heavily armed security teams to protect him during a trip to Santiago in 2004.

Since 1980, newly-elected US presidents have developed a habit of making sure that they meet the Mexican president ahead of any other head of state prior to their inauguration. Obama's first foreign trip will be to Canada to meet its prime minister, Stephen Harper.

According to the Mexican version of the meeting, Obama praised Calderón for his leadership in Latin America and said that Mexico was an important ally in the expansion of democracy. This could be construed as praise for Calderón's initiative in repairing Mexico's relations with Cuba, which had been virtually broken off by Calderón's predecessor, Vicente Fox. It may be a hint that Mexico, rather than Brazil, will be the US preferred intermediary with the Castro regime. Calderón himself is due to visit Cuba in March.

The Mexicans also played up Calderón's proposal to Obama that the US should seal a formal alliance to deal with what Calderón called “joint problems" such as security. Calderón's proposal had more than a tinge of desperation: “I think the safer Mexico is, the safer the US will be," Calderón declared. “The idea is that we will have to fight the common problem of organized crime, terrorism and drug trafficking, which is an international problem, together."

Oddly, if security was Mexico's priority issue for Obama, the Mexican delegation included none of the security ministers. This may be an indication that Calderón is finally preparing to reshuffle and streamline the security side of his administration. He could argue he needs a new team that can mesh better with Obama's team. Obama has yet to announce who will be running his policies towards Latin America. One appointee who has a major bearing on relations with Mexico is Janet Napolitano, the former Democrat governor of Arizona, who will be Obama's Homeland Security Secretary.

As Governor of Arizona, Napolitano had decent relations with her counterparts in Sonora. Sonora is a fiefdom of the traditional Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). It is worth noting that of Mexico's six states bordering the US, only Baja California is run by Calderón's Partido Acción Nacional (PAN).

Obama did not bring Napolitano to the lunch meeting with Calderón. He did field his Chief of Staff Designate, Rahm Emanuel; his National Security Advisor Designate, General Jim Jones; and the White House National Economic Council Director-Designate, Lawrence Summers.

Mexico said that it was happy with Obama's explicit backing for the Iniciativa Mérida, which boosts US military aid to Mexico. There is some doubt, however, that the US Congress, with so many calls on government funds to combat the economic crisis, will back the Iniciativa Mérida to the budgeted US$400m in 2009. The outgoing Bush government has delivered US$298m in two tranches.    

It is worth noting that Calderón followed up his lunch with Obama with a dinner for senior US senators and congressmen. Calderón drew an impressive list of US senators: attendees included Jeff Bingaman, president of the senate energy committee who is sponsoring a bill to reduce weapons-smuggling from the US to Mexico; Mel Martí­nez, a prominent Cuban-American Republican from Florida; John Kerry, a former presidential candidate and likely chairman of the senate foreign relations' committee and Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the senate intelligence committee.

Obama's own comments on the meeting with Calderón were positive. He was, however, non-committal about immigration reform, a key issue from Mexico's point of view. Obama said that the two men had discussed “how we can have a comprehensive and thoughtful strategy that ultimately strengthens both countries."   Sceptical Mexicans noted, however, that Obama said nothing about halting construction of the barriers on the US side of the border designed to deter illegal immigrants.

Obama underlined how important Napolitano will be in relations with Mexico by saying, after the meeting with Calderón, that he “believe[d] the cooperation under the Mérida Initiative can be a building block for a deeper relationship_[and] _support [ed]_ efforts in the border states in both the US and Mexico to eradicate drug-related violence and stop the flow of guns and cash." Obama also told Calderón that he intends to ask the Secretary of Homeland Security to lead an effort to increase information sharing to strengthen those efforts.   Obama also pledged to take more effective action from the US to stem the flow of arms from the US to Mexico.

• Networking
  Besides meeting Obama for lunch and US senators for dinner, President Calderón also held meetings with Harry Reid, the Democrat leader of the Senate and Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat leader in the House.

• All invited
  Calderón took three senators with him to Washington. They were Rosario Green, a former foreign minister (and member of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional); Luis Alberto Villarreal (from the Partido Acción Nacional) and Silvano Aureoles (from the Partido de la Revolución Democrática).