OpEd Contributors
Has Obama lost Mexico?
By: Brian Faughnan, OpEd Contributor
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March 29, 2009
TAKE-HOME: The US-Mexico relationship is a critical one; how has Barack Obama ruined it so quickly?
KEY DATA: Mexico is our number-three international trading partner and oil supplier; our economy depends on a stable relationship.
When historians recall the first days of the Obama administration, one of the most noteworthy stories will be the speed with which the President alienated key allies. With the President scheduled to visit Mexico on April 16, attention is turning to a relationship under strain, thanks to a series of missteps by Obama’s team. While the administration is trying to repair the damage, his visit may not be pretty.
Mexico's President Felipe Calderon and Obama first met in January, before the latter’s inauguration. There was concern about the potential for friction, since Calderon had opposed calls to renegotiate NAFTA. But by the time of the meeting, Calderon indicated a willingness to re-examine the accord.
His aides spoke optimistically about laying the groundwork for ‘a great relationship.’ And the Mexican President himself expressed optimism that Obama would deliver on a longstanding Mexican priority – an agreement to grant legal status to Mexicans in the U.S. illegally.
But from that promising start, things have gone downhill quickly.
The biggest irritant has been the administration’s handling of Mexico’s bloody drug war. Mexican officials were upset at being listed as a potential ‘failed state,’ by the U.S. military and were upset when Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair suggested that Mexico may be unable to govern parts of its territory.
Given the blood and treasure Calderon has committed to a war on drugs driven largely by U.S. demand, Mexican officials were stung at the suggestion that violence may be tearing the country apart.
The straw that broke the camel’s back, however, was Obama’s move to end a program to allow some Mexican commercial trucks to operate in the U.S. NAFTA requires the U.S. to completely open its trucking sector, but the U.S. had refused to fulfill the obligation until it lost a challenge before an arbitration panel.
The trucking pilot program was created in 2007, and statistics show that the few Mexican trucks allowed to operate in the U.S. do better on safety reviews than American truckers. Mexico felt the program had performed well enough to be expanded.
Instead it took just days for Obama and congressional Democrats to do the bidding of the Teamsters union and cancel the program – unilaterally, without debate, and without discussing it with our treaty partner. Mexico declared the U.S. in violation of NAFTA (which the arbitration panel had already made clear) and imposed tariffs on 90 different items, specifically designed to impact states represented by those who killed the program – among them Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Sources in Mexico say they will impose additional tariffs soon if the U.S. doesn’t move to comply.
The Obama team recognizes the problem; Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is working with Congressional leaders to develop a new truck program. But opponents are still singing from the Big Labor songbook: no new trucking program – at least until Mexico completely overhauls the entire regulatory structure of its trucking industry to match U.S. rules. It’s unclear whether Obama can force Congress to compromise – even if he wanted to.
Calderon, meanwhile, has completely changed his stance toward Obama. He got little attention in the U.S. when he told a Mexican audience that the U.S. was waging “an anti-Mexico campaign.”
His next salvo was in the Financial Times, when he called upon Obama to increase U.S. aid for the Mexican drug war from $300 million to as much as $35 billion. Congress won’t deliver that much, but only Calderon knows what it will take to buy a warm relationship – assuming it can be bought.
Calderon may have decided that he’d rather have an ugly American to rail against. If so, that will make it tougher to address border violence and illegal immigration, and even create concerns about energy security (since Mexico is our third largest oil supplier).
If Obama expects warm and fuzzy stories about his Mexico visit and a strong bilateral relationship, he will need to crack heads in Congress to restore the trucking program and increase U.S. aid.
If his effort falls short, he might be greeted with an announcement that Mexico has placed a whole new round of tariffs on dozens more American products. If that happens, Obama has only himself to blame.
Brian Faughnan was a government consultant in Mexico City and is now a contributor to RedState.com and the Weekly Standard blog.
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