Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
The Mexican government is committed to developing a strategy and negotiation method with Donald Trump’s government. To achieve a correct strategy and a method for addressing everything that will happen bilaterally in the coming years, it is essential to analyze and understand the neighbor to know how to address it successfully.
Marcelo Ebrard expressed his analysis when he “said, “We already know Trump’s negotiation method”, referring to his threats to impose tariffs to obtain concessions from the Mexican side. In general, the Mexican side, both from the specialized journalism, officials, and legislators, are sure that, having detected what irritates Trump the most, it will be necessary to create a “transactional” relationship with him. That will be the cost to be paid so as not to disrupt the established commercial relationship. The President has started by wanting to “debate and contradict” Trump publicly. It is a reaction lacking a background analysis of the character and the new conditions surrounding him.
AMLO outlined a method for handling Trump that worked for him. Without explaining the reasons for its decisions, the previous administration jammed the border with thousands of soldiers and National Guardsmen to stem the migratory flow. In return, Trump stopped criticizing the 4T’s domestic policies, which meant the curtailment of institutions fundamental to the proper functioning of a liberal democracy. Trump returned a high-ranking former Mexican Army commander arrested in the United States for his ties to drug trafficking. It was a concession by Trump to AMLO that surprised all and sundry. Trump systematically ignored confidential reports informing AMLO’s ties to drug trafficking.
According to the Mexican government’s analysis, the message was evident then. If you give Trump what he wants to present himself to his social base as the big winner, you can balance relations with him. It allowed AMLO to implement the policy he wanted in Mexico, imposing a new political regime. Trump ignored the Mexican authoritarian drift because he is also quite authoritarian, and as proof of this, there is his affection for Putin and Kim Jong-Un.
With Biden, things changed. Biden chose to send emissaries to tell AMLO that they were not comfortable with either the authoritarian drift or the complacency with drug trafficking. And much less with the Mexican love affair with the “strong men of the world” such as Putin, Xi Jinping, Díaz-Canel, Ortega, and Maduro. AMLO refused to attend the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles called by Biden. He saw no need to please the Democrat and considered him weak and pliable.
Until a U.S. operative kidnapped Mayo Zambada in Sinaloa, took him to the U.S., and squeezed all his information about the relationship between the Sinaloa Cartel and López Obrador himself. AMLO’s six-year term ended with a civil war in Sinaloa, which the current government has not been able to extinguish, as it has been going on for 4 months with an intensity never seen before, with 11 thousand troops stationed in the state and millions of citizens affected. It will probably be unable to put out the war because elements within the Mexican state security forces do not want it to end.
Today’s Trump is very different from the Trump of 8 years ago. He has a much more ideologically oriented government team than his first administration. Just look at what the cabinet nominees have to say about Mexico. Michael Walz, his Homeland Security advisor, introduced a bill before Congress to legalize the use of U.S. military forces against drug cartels in Mexico. Tom Homan, the Immigration Czar, has expressed support for the use of U.S. special forces in Mexico. His Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, supports the eventual use of military force in Mexico when needed. Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, has said he supports sending U.S. troops to Mexico in common agreement with the Mexican government. And he has denounced AMLO as an ally of drug trafficking.
That is the tone and ideological perspective of the new Trump team that will assume power on January 20. The administration’s team was something else in its first term. There was no such ideological approach. He had a team that was more business than ideological. Today, something completely different is happening. They are hawks coming in to disrupt many things happening inside and outside the United States.
This condition of Trump’s new team nullifies, on all sides, what Ebrard said. Instead, it should be said: “We do not know this Trump, and we are going to have to act with extreme caution, gather good information from the United States, and build a social support base within the many existing communities in that country: academics, businessmen, journalists, politicians, universities, Latino organizations, “unions”.
The new U.S. government intends to rethink its relationship with Mexico fundamentally. The transactional idea applied by the current Mexican government, pretending to punish China commercially to look good with Washington and dispersing and dismembering the caravans so that they are no longer the subject of newspapers, are necessary actions. Still, they will not be enough to satisfy the new ideological wave that prevails in Washington.
It is necessary to see the possible scenarios in order to design the corresponding responses from Mexico. And we must start with objectively evaluating our situation as a country. Mexico is relatively isolated on the international scene. Besides the recent distance from China, Canada has turned its back on Mexico in renegotiating the CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC. Soon, a Conservative government in Canada will be willing to exclude Mexico from the trilateral trade agreement. Trump will likely prefer a bilateral deal with Mexico, giving him greater leverage to push for other concessions, especially on foreign policy.
If Mexico is excluded from the CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC, it will probably open a negotiation compass for the new terms of a trade agreement. Trade with countries that do not apply free market rules will likely be prohibited. China, Russia, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela fall comfortably into that category. The use of child and slave labor in countries will be banned, in addition to combating labor abuses and freedom of unionization. Be careful with Cuban doctors, who are considered to be slave labor. In addition, treaties with Europe and South America should include democratic chapters, ensuring the maintenance of liberal political regimes with three independent and autonomous branches of government, freedom of the press, and reliable electoral systems.
A new negotiation between the United States and Mexico implies the renewal of trust between the two countries as strategic allies internationally. Trust must be restored between the two nations, something that has been eroded in recent years. Specifically, Washington under Trump will seek the cessation of the Mexican drift towards the China-Moscow-Tehran axis and with the Cuba-Nicaragua-Venezuela sub-axis. It will demand reaffirming the strategic alliance with the West and liberal democracies. Marco Rubio dixit.
All these decisions are at stake with Trump’s arrival and his team of ideologues of the new US hawkishness. What is Sheinbaum’s government strategy in negotiating in this new context? Will it understand the conditions of the new world? Will it adapt to circumstances that go against her ideological postulate?
@rpascoep
Further Reading: