A woman can dream.
Read my post, Will NAFTA expire in 5 years?
Mexico: AMLO hates NAFTA
Ever-hopeful of the presidency Andrés Manuel López Obrador wants NAFTA negotiationd suspended until after next year’s election
Currently,
[Foreign Minister Luis] Videgaray told reporters that Mexico would leave the talks if the U.S. began formal proceedings to withdraw from Nafta. Mr. Trump has the authority to unilaterally withdraw from the deal by giving a six-month notice.
AMLO is not happy, and says that he would renegotiate any deal that harms Mexico’s interests if he wins the vote. What are the odds of his win?
Polls show Mr. López Obrador, a 63-year-old former mayor of Mexico City, is the early front-runner among possible candidates for next July’s presidential election. Although he lost two previous votes for president in 2006 and 2012 and is a divisive figure, he has gotten a boost from the country’s repeated corruption scandals, as well as a nationalist surge in response to Mr. Trump’s repeated criticism of Mexico. Mr. Trump has shocked Mexicans with his administration’s efforts to build a border wall, its crackdown on undocumented migration, as well as his threats to terminate Nafta.
AMLO has praised Fidel Castro as a “great figure of history”, and claims Castro’s human rights record has been misunderstood. Let’s hope he is defeated for a third time.
Mexico: Trump wants NAFTA changed
Changes, not withdrawal?
Rather than kill Nafta, Donald Trump and his advisers appear set to push for substantial changes to the treaty governing U.S. trade with Mexico and Canada, an effort that could prove difficult to negotiate and perilous to the regional economy.
Emphasis added,
Mr. Trump hasn’t released a blueprint for his new vision of Nafta, but his comments and those of his advisers suggest they want big changes. Among the likeliest would be special tariffs or other barriers to reduce the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico and new taxes that would hit U.S. firms that moved production there, according to Trump advisers. His team says it may also seek to remove a Nafta provision that allows Mexican and Canadian companies to challenge U.S. regulations outside the court system.
For their part,
Mexican officials say they are willing to update the 22-year-old treaty, including adding new chapters on e-commerce and other aspects that didn’t exist in the mid-1990s.
But Mexican officials are wary of revisiting tariffs and export quotas.
Rather than panic, it appears to me that there is room for negotiation, even when both parties are coming from apparently opposite ends, especially if both countries focus on keeping jobs in our hemisphere rather than outsourced to China, as has been the case.
In other headlines,
What’s the difference between TTIP and TPP and why does Donald Trump want them scrapped?
As I write this post, the Dow Industrials Top 19000 in Early Trading, a Day After Hitting Record Alongside S&P, Nasdaq
Mexico: O’Grady weighs the options
Mary O’Grady writes about Mexico’s Options in a Trump Trade War. The country could impose retaliatory duties and look for new trade partners. Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo
told Reuters on Nov. 10 that his government is “ready to talk so we can explain the strategic importance of Nafta for the region. Here we’re not talking about . . . renegotiating it, we’re simply talking about dialogue.”
He also said Mexico will look for new markets, adding to more than 40 existing free-trade agreements. It had hoped for expanded opportunities via the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation accord that includes the U.S. and much of Asia. But President Obama wasn’t able to get TPP through Congress and Mr. Trump has promised to kill it. Mr. Guajardo said that Mexico will pursue the possibility of completing a smaller TPP with the countries that are expected to have ratified it by the end of 2016. He named Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia. Australia would probably be eager to replace the U.S. as Mexico’s chief food supplier.
I’m more of a wait-and-see person. Trump famously starts negotiations with outrageous demands, and Peña Nieto had also mentioned he wanted NAFTA renegotiated.
In other headlines:
Mexico Lifts Rates Amid Peso’s Fall, Trump’s Rise. A weaker peso and the U.S. election weigh on the economy, driving action by the central bank
Frontman for disgraced Mexican governor handled $7m property portfolio. Further details emerge about activities of Moisés Mansur and his links to Javier Duarte. Mansur is now on the lam,
The Mexican authorities allege Mansur is part of a complex network of more than 30 companies and proxies set up by Duarte, who disappeared on October 15 after being accused of embezzling some $26 million during his tenure as the ruling Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) governor of Veracruz, where he left a public debt of $837 million.
Mexico: Obama arrives for summit
Obama Heads to Mexico Amigos Meeting Strained by Keystone
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s frustration with U.S. President Barack Obama’s failure to approve the Keystone XL pipeline may make this installment of the North America summit, known as the “Three Amigos,” the frostiest since the annual meetings began almost a decade ago.
At the one-day meeting tomorrow in Toluca, Mexico, with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Harper, Obama is bringing an agenda focused on trade, education, border security and stopping drug trafficking. Yet 20 years after the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect, the U.S. and Canada are at loggerheads over a $5.4 billion collaboration that would carry oil south from the thick sands of Alberta to American refineries along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana.
Hey, Canada has the oil, and will sell it.
Obama arrives in Mexico for summit that may show NAFTA strains
Rather than re-debate NAFTA, Obama is expected to press Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to speak with one voice as they negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed trade bloc that includes 12 countries around the Pacific Rim.
Comment from prior post:
In the 1980′s Reagan had Saudi Arabia increase oil production to drop the price and hurt the USSR’s cash cow. Why can’t we allow Keystone XL to be completed to kill Venezuela’s cash cow? Canadian heavy blend and Venezuelan crudes are all the same type of crude oil which are used by several very major Gulf Coast refineries. Other crude oils cannot economically replace them.
Indeed!
The first 2014 Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean
ARGENTINABRAZIL
Brazil’s fighter jet decision
CHILE
Photos: Violent protests in Chile
Chilean miracle miners back in spotlight, with Antonio Banderas.
COLOMBIA
Bogota needs a “Bloomberg”; maybe, but it’ll do much better with a Giuliani.
CUBA
Reuters shocked…. shocked! … by Cuban car pricing
Mujeres: la carne barata de la revolución
The media
The most absurdly oblivious headline you’ll read all year
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Haitians without a nation
A ruling in the Dominican Republic divides immigrants in Boston
USAID to Pull Out of Ecuador
Organization cites efforts of Correa admin to stifle aid programs
Sitting in the Ecuadorian embassy, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange derides Catholic confessional system but can’t come up with an original thought.
HONDURAS
Election fraud in Honduras
JAMAICA
Cool Runnings Again? Jamaican Bobsleigh Team Return for Sochi Winter Olympic Glory Bid
LATIN AMERICA
Nafta at 20: A Model for Trade Policy
Opponents of the 1993 agreement have been proven definitively wrong.
Mexico 2013: End of the Year Reflections and the Year to Come
Suspected leader of Mexican drug cartel nabbed at Amsterdam airport, via Gates of Vienna.
PANAMA
Trouble at the Panama Canal
Your money or your locks
THE $5.25 billion expansion of the Panama Canal is one of the world’s great infrastructure projects, aimed at enabling giant mega-tankers to pass through the 100-year-old waterway between the Atlantic and the Pacific. So a threat by an international consortium, led by Spain’s Sacyr, to halt construction work on January 20th if the Panama Canal Authority (PCA) doesn’t pay it $1.6 billion for cost overruns, is serious. The amount it is claiming is fully half the $3.2 billion it bid in 2009 for its part of the project.
Jorge Quijano, administrator of the PCA, told The Economist that the authority would not pay the money because cost increases were accounted for in the contract.
Panama Canal expansion: Spain steps in to negotiations
Meanwhile, In 2013 Chiriquí Had 673 Earthquakes
PARAGUAY
Paraguay drug seizures up by 39% in 2013
PUERTO RICO
Could a Puerto Rico Default Hammer the $3.7 Trillion US Muni-Bond Market in 2014?
Puerto Rico Marijuana Reform Gets A Second Life
Puerto Rico’s Population Continues Rapid Decline
USA
No, an illegal immigrant should not be admitted to the bar
URUGUAY
Uruguay consumer prices up 8.5 pct in 2013, top government target
VENEZUELA
Venezuela’s surveillance state strikes again
Transforming a mistake into a revamped tool of repression: the Delcy Rodriguez scandal
Venezuelan Central Bank Joins The Dark Side
The inflationary monster (in Spanish)
The week’s posts:
Argentina: More price controls
Latin America: Free trade vs. Mercosur
Cuba: Lies, lies, and more lies
Mexico: Another Fast & Furious gun found
Italy: Latin American thieves pick the wrong town to hide
Is 2014 Latin America’s “big year”?
At Da Tech Guy Blog: Ringin’ in the New Year in yellow undies: A brief story by Fausta
Video: NAFTA and Mexican Agriculture
At MRUniversity
Has NAFTA caused unemployment in Mexico’s agricultural sector? What happened to agricultural prices in the US and Mexico after NAFTA? Has NAFTA led to gains in agricultural productivity? This video explores some of these key questions by looking at data from a paper titled “The effects of agricultural domestic and trade liberalization on food security: lessons from Mexico” by Antonio Yunez Naude.
Today’s podcast at 11AM Eastern: Washington’s trade war with Mexico
Today’s podcast: Washington’s trade war with Mexico.
Related articles:
US law sparks Mexican trade row
Mexico Strikes Back in Trade Spat
Washington Starts Another Trade War
Previous posts:
Mexico raises tariffs reacting to Obama’s truck action
Previous podcast:
Will Mexico retaliate when Obama violates NAFTA?
Chat’s open at 10:45AM. See you there!
