Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
One day after Trump’s inauguration, Claudia Sheinbaum said that Mexico would not accept the US “stay in Mexico” policy. A few days later, the deportations began. Yesterday, more than two thousand people were expelled; most were not Mexican. Obviously, what is said at the mañaneras, to the beat of patriotic fervor, is one thing, and what is agreed behind the scenes between governments is another, completely different thing.
What does Trump’s policy consist of? Forcing Mexico to accept non-Mexican deportees on its territory. Mexico was preparing, said the President at her mañanera, to receive exclusively undocumented Mexicans deported from the neighboring country. The implication of Trump’s policy, obviously, is to force Mexico, whether it wants to or not, to be a “safe third country.”
Until that moment, no contact had been reported between Mexican government officials and any US counterpart. Suddenly, in the mañanera, contact was announced, presumably by telephone, between the Mexican Foreign Minister, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, and Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State.
For the bilateral relationship to continue, agreements must be reached, and both parties must make concessions. Claudia Sheinbaum’s government is weighing the cost-benefit of concessions to the US government.
What was said and agreed in that conversation is unknown. As always, we will find out when the US side says so, issues a diplomatic note, or when someone writes a memoir because the Mexican government never informs its people honestly about the content of its contacts and agreements with the US government. We have been receiving distorted or frankly false information about intergovernmental agreements for years.
An example of this is the case of Marcelo Ebrard, who, as foreign minister during the López Obrador government, had the audacity to say that there was no agreement with the United States on the “stay in Mexico” program when, in fact, he had accepted and agreed to it with Pompeo, Trump’s Secretary of State. How do we know this? Because Pompeo wrote this in his memoir, ridiculing Ebrard. Later, Trump himself mocked Ebrard for being “weak”.
It is clear that Ebrard acted in agreement with López Obrador and against the opinion of the Mexican ambassador in Washington, Martha Bárcena, who advised the President not to accept the “stay in Mexico” policy as a safe third country. However, he accepted it in order to reach a substantive agreement with Trump, a totally transactional one. Mexico would stop migration in its territory in exchange for the United States not interfering in Mexican security policy, together with the signing of the CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC. That’s how rudimentary and relevant the agreement was.
But that was then. Now things are very different with Trump 2.0. He comes with a very elaborate and transformative government project. Unlike his first term in office, he now comes with the same racist and misogynistic prejudices but superimposed on a much more elaborate political-ideological platform.
Any López Obrador-type compromise proposal to Trump is doomed to failure. Today’s Trumpism sees the results of the 4T’s six-year administration and does not like what is happening on its southern border. Succinctly put, it sees in Mexico a government and its party that are objectively allied with organized crime and sympathetic to the various authoritarian regimes around the globe: China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, all of them declared enemies of the United States.
They also appreciate that the Mexican economy is closely linked to the US economy and that they need each other. The annual economic exchange exceeds 700 billion dollars, which poses a strategic problem. For the USMCA to continue, all parties must fully respect the agreement. There are doubts about Mexican compliance from Washington and Ottawa.
The area of discussion within the Mexican government revolves around what the Mexican government agreed to do to placate Trump and what else needs to be done to stabilize the relationship. Mexico has taken action in that direction without saying that they are concessions, much less attempts to appease the neighboring government.
For weeks now, the Chinese commercial presence in Mexico has begun to become more expensive and complicated. Tariff measures seek to replicate the actions and words of the new US government. The closure of wholesale and retail establishments selling Chinese products is already happening at the national level. Customs are starting to stop Chinese products from entering the country. And, of course, the practice of selling Chinese steel and aluminum to the United States through the CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC as if they were Mexican products has already been stopped. This illegal commercial practice occurred with the approval of López Obrador.
Mexico is offering Trump, the head of Chinese products, a sacrificial offering as a sign of good bilateral friendship.
On the other hand, despite publicly rejecting it, the Mexican government has also silently accepted the “stay in Mexico” program, as López Obrador did. The government does not publicly recognize what it does to maintain the fiction of national sovereignty when it knows it is theater.
Will applying tough new tariffs on Chinese products and accepting the “stay in Mexico” program be enough to appease Trump? The quick answer is no.
Trump has an agenda full of ideological and political approaches that he did not have in his first term. Chinese products and “stay in Mexico” will not be enough to satisfy his new appetite.
Today he is demanding political concessions that are contrary to the programmatic theses of the 4T. 1. He is demanding a categorical break with drug trafficking and its all-out fight. 2. He is also demanding respect for everything that the CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC means: the right for his country’s companies to invest without limitations in all sectors of the Mexican economy since Mexican companies enjoy that right in his country. 3. And it demands that Mexico confront the authoritarian regimes that are declared enemies of the United States: China, Russia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Bolivia.
In his now famous document delivered to Morena in the Senate, AMLO warned that confronting drug trafficking will cause a “rupture of the alliance between government and people”. This rupture will incite a citizen insurrection that he himself could lead. Apparently, he defends drug trafficking as a “sovereign national industry”.
Accepting unrestricted foreign investment in the energy sector and other sectors, such as lithium, will go against the precepts of “national sovereignty” AMLO has established for the 4th Transformation government.
Breaking with ideological allies such as Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela runs counter to the declared principles of the 4T. AMLO sees China as the rising world power and the United States as the declining power. For him, allying with China is allying with the new world leader. His adoration for Cuba, even in its comatose state, is an insurmountable barrier.
The Sheinbaum government faces a crossroads: follow AMLO’s precepts, confront the United States, or move towards new agreements with Mexico’s essential economic partner. Which elements of these three Gordian knots will it be willing to concede to maintain a stable relationship with the United States?
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