Mexican president meets Trump for first time with business on the menu

By Arshad Mohammed

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador met his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump for the first time on Wednesday, in a potentially tricky encounter that may broach tensions over Mexico’s treatment of U.S. energy sector investors.

The leftist leader has brushed off criticism at home to push ahead with plans to meet Trump, a Republican widely disliked in Mexico because of his incendiary remarks about its people.

The meeting ostensibly aims to celebrate the start of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) trade deal, but disputes over energy sector contracts in Mexico could arise as the two men got together in the afternoon.

Mindful of the coronavirus pandemic, which is still surging in Mexico and the United States, the two did not shake hands as they met outside the White House. Neither wore face masks.

The USMCA was crafted in long negotiations headed by U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer.

Two people familiar with preparations for the meeting said the private sector was eager for Trump to raise concerns about Lopez Obrador’s attempts to renegotiate billions of dollars worth of contracts in energy infrastructure.

One said the issue had been put high on Lighthizer’s agenda for the meeting, though despite promptings from his own ambassador in Mexico, Trump has made little of it so far. Lighthizer’s office did not reply to a request for comment.

Lopez Obrador’s government is slowly rolling back a 2013-14 opening of the energy industry in favor of a state-led model, and has called a number of major contracts into question.

A senior U.S. official said on Monday evening Mexico’s government had pledged to uphold those contracts.

“So, we are certainly hoping that they will keep their word,” the official told reporters.

Mexican-U.S. cooperation over Trump’s immigration policies could feature prominently, although one source familiar with the matter said the talks aimed to prioritize business.

The summit was pitched to mark the start of USMCA, which replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement that Trump long lambasted. But the two-day gathering was scaled back to a single day after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau opted out amid new U.S. threats of tariffs on Canadian goods.

Lopez Obrador is being joined by a delegation of business officials, including Mexico’s richest man, telecoms magnate Carlos Slim. They will dine on Wednesday evening with Trump and American business executives at the White House.

Lopez Obrador’s critics and some U.S. Democrats say Trump wants to use the meeting to drum up support among Hispanic voters ahead of the Nov. 3 presidential election.

Opinion polls show Hispanic voters favor Trump’s Democratic rival, Joe Biden. Lopez Obrador will not meet Biden on the trip.

(Reporting by Arshad Mohammed; Additional reporting by Dave Graham and David Lawder; Writing by Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Peter Cooney and Alistair Bell)

Mexican president eyes cooperation after U.S. meeting on security

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Friday that his government is not at odds with the Trump administration after what he called good meetings on security with U.S. Attorney General William Barr on Thursday.

Lopez Obrador told a regular morning news briefing there was scope for bilateral cooperation on issues such as migration and the trafficking of drugs and arms, but that his government would not accept military intervention by foreign powers in Mexico.

(Reporting by Dave Graham)

Border row pitches Mexican president into deep water with Trump

The border fence between Mexico and the United States is pictured from Tijuana, Mexico March 29, 2019. REUTERS/Jorge Duenes

By Dave Graham

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Donald Trump’s threat to shut the U.S. border if Mexico does not halt all illegal immigration has exposed the limitations of the new Mexican government’s strategy of trying to appease the U.S. president as he gears up for re-election.

Amid a surge in migrant detentions at the southwest U.S. border, Trump on Friday said he would close the 2,000-mile (3,200-km) frontier, or sections of it, during the coming week if Mexico did not halt the flow of people.

Casting the government under leftist President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador as the villain in his struggle to curb illegal immigration to the United States, Trump returned to a signature theme of his 2015-2016 presidential election bid.

His words were a slap in the face to Lopez Obrador, who has refused to answer back to provocative comments from Trump. Instead, the Mexican leader has worked to cement his power base by combating poverty with welfare handouts and lambasting his predecessors as corrupt.

On Friday, Lopez Obrador again said he would not quarrel with Trump, invoking “love and peace” and repeating his commitment to curbing migration.

However, for former Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castaneda, Mexico faces “incredibly damaging” consequences if Trump does order “go-slows” at the border, which would pitch Lopez Obrador into uncomfortable new territory.

“He’s totally unfamiliar with international affairs. He’d prefer not to have to worry about these things,” Castaneda said, noting that the U.S. president had tested many governments. “Nobody’s been able to find a way to manage Trump. It’s a mess.”

Staunchly non-interventionist in international affairs, Lopez Obrador shows little interest in diplomacy. He has often said “the best foreign policy is domestic policy.”

But as the destination of 80 percent of Mexico’s exports and workplace of hundreds of thousands of Mexicans, the United States offers Trump plenty of leverage to apply pressure via the border.

Policy experts say Trump’s demand is not realistic and that Mexican authorities are already stretched.

Still, Mexico has signaled it will redouble efforts to contain migration, which stems largely from three poor, violent Central American countries: Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said he did not believe Trump was demanding an outright stop to the migrant flow, which has run into the millions over the past decade.

“What can be done is to improve work on registering and regulating (migration),” Ebrard told Reuters. “They’re asking us to put into effect what we said we would do.”

The government has vowed to curb migration by addressing the root causes, keeping better tabs on the people entering Mexico and adopting a more humane approach to the phenomenon.

In exchange, Lopez Obrador has sought to enlist Trump’s aid in tackling the problems of Central America, which critics say has been scarred by a history of messy U.S. interventions.

On Thursday, Lopez Obrador said migration was chiefly a matter for Washington and the troubled region, reflecting the view that Mexico cannot help being sandwiched between the struggling countries and the richest nation on the planet.

Instead, the U.S. State Department said on Saturday it was cutting off aid to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, raising questions about Trump’s commitment to helping there.

Soaring border arrests have rankled with the U.S. president.

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol projections are for over 90,000 apprehensions to be logged during March, according to data provided to the Mexican government. That is up more than 140 percent from March 2018, and a seven-fold jump from 2017. (Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/2V59n2R)

At the same time, Lopez Obrador is sending fewer migrants back home. In December-February, the administration’s first three months, the number dropped 17 percent from a year earlier to 19,360, data from the National Migration Institute show.

The fall partly reflects the government’s decision to issue humanitarian visas to encourage Central Americans to stay in Mexico. The visas proved so popular that the government had to suspend them, officials say.

Meanwhile, Lopez Obrador’s savings drive to pay for his social programs has cut the budget of the National Migration Institute by more than a fifth this year.

‘LIFE AND DEATH’

The clash illustrates Lopez Obrador’s miscalculation in thinking he could contain Trump’s hostility toward Mexico with U.S. presidential elections in 2020, said Agustin Barrios Gomez, a member of the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations.

Tension was inevitable given that Trump’s tough stance on illegal immigration is “immediately antagonistic” to Lopez Obrador’s core constituency: poorer Mexicans who often seek to better their lot in the United States, he argued.

Yet by agreeing in December to accept Central American asylum seekers while their claims are processed in the United States, Lopez Obrador gave the impression he could be “pushed around” by Trump, said former foreign minister Castaneda, who backed Lopez Obrador’s closest rival in the last election.

To keep the border open, Mexican business leaders say they are leaning on U.S. partners to pressure Congress.

A shutdown would be “very negative for both countries,” said deputy Mexican economy minister Luz Maria de la Mora, who saw Trump’s comments as part of his election campaign.

“I think the U.S. administration and the advisers in the White House know it’s not a good idea,” she told Reuters.

But if push came to shove, Mexico would suffer most, said Castaneda.

“The Americans have a much greater capacity … to outlast the Mexicans,” he said. “For Mexicans it’s a life or death issue. For Americans it’s a pain in the ass, but that’s it.”

(Reporting by Dave Graham; Additional reporting by Daina Beth Solomon, Delphine Schrank and Lizbeth Diaz; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Mexico suggests work visas for Central Americans, wants U.S. to do same

Mexico's new President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador holds a news conference at National Palace in Mexico City, Mexico December 3, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador proposed on Wednesday offering more work visas for Central Americans and said the United States should do the same, part of a negotiation aimed at stemming the northward flow of migrants.

Lopez Obrador, who took office on Saturday, said he would discuss immigration with U.S. President Donald Trump in coming days, including increasing investment in southern Mexico and Central America.

“We are proposing investment in productive projects and in job creation, and not only that, also work visas for Mexico and for the United States,” he told a news conference, saying he would give more details “soon.”

Mexico and the United States have been in talks about how to manage the large groups moving through Mexico in caravans, with Lopez Obrador pushing for investment to address the poverty and crime that drive thousands of people every year from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

Lopez Obrador, soon after being elected in July, sent a letter to Trump suggesting they work together to address the root causes of immigration.

“It is very important to us that we reach an investment agreement between companies and governments, to create jobs in Central America and our country,” he said.

Lopez Obrador plans major infrastructure projects in the impoverished south of Mexico including his home state of Tabasco. He says those plans, including a refinery and two railways will provide jobs to Mexicans and Central Americans.

He did not reply when asked if his government was considering a U.S. proposal to return Central American asylum seekers to Mexican territory while U.S. courts processed their cases, saying only that their rights would be respected.

The arrival of several thousand Central Americans in Mexico’s border city of Tijuana about a month ago prompted Trump to mobilize the U.S. Army to beef up border security, while restricting the number of asylum applications accepted per day.

While overall illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border is much lower than it was 20 years ago, there are more Central Americans, families and asylum seekers than in the past.

Some migrants clambered over a tall fence to cross into the United States from Tijuana on Tuesday, hoping to speed their asylum applications by turning themselves over to U.S. Border Patrol officials.

(Reporting by Frank Jack Daniel, Writing by Daina Beth Solomon; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Peter Cooney)

Mexico ruling party says rules aimed at stopping rise of left

Enrique Ochoa Reza, Chairman of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) arrives to give his speech during their national assembly ahead of the 2018 election at Mexico City’s Palacio de los Deportes, Mexico August 12, 2017.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Rules adopted by Mexico’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party to allow it to form coalitions and non-members to run for president were necessary to stop leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador from winning office next year, its president said.

The rules adopted over the weekend give the once-dominant party, known as PRI, a better chance of clinging to power in the July presidential election, where veteran leftist Lopez Obrador is an early favorite among voters tired of graft scandals, violence and a tepid economy.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador speaks during a news conference in Mexico City, Mexico June 9, 2017.

File photo: Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador speaks during a news conference in Mexico City, Mexico June 9, 2017. REUTERS/Henry Romero

PRI President Enrique Ochoa called Lopez Obrador “the enemy to beat,” repeating a long-standing refrain by Mexico’s ruling class that he would wreck the economy with Venezuelan-style policies.

“He is the threat for Mexico going forward,” Ochoa said in an interview on Foro TV. “We don’t want to have the same fate as Venezuela, with food shortages, the highest inflation in the world and GDP falling by 7 percent.”

Since last year, Mexico has been more concerned about a possible rupture of trade ties with the United States under Donald Trump than domestic politics, but the government has grown confident in recent months that talks starting this week in Washington will not end the North American Trade Agreement, which underpins much of Mexico’s economy.

Lopez Obrador recently denied having anything to do with the Venezuelan government. On the two previous occasions that the former Mexico City mayor ran for president, his opponents used the same strategy of comparing him with Venezuela’s socialists.

Ochoa said the new party rules allowed any future PRI president-elect to form coalitions to “foment governability.” He did not rule out alliances with any major party, beyond saying coalitions should be with those the centrist PRI could identify with ideologically.

Party veteran Mario Fabio Beltrones proposed allowing coalitions. The rules allowing non-party members to run for president are widely seen as favoring Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade, a technocrat untainted by the corruption scandals that have eroded the popularity of Pena Nieto’s government.

Meade has served in governments of both the PRI and the conservative opposition National Action Party. He is not a member of either party.

 

(Reporting by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)