Mexico’s election winner has big plans for U.S.-Mexican ties
By: Andres Oppenheimer
Source: www.miamiherald.com
MEXICO CITY -- If Mexico’s presidential election winner Enrique Peña Nieto gets his way, there will be a major upgrade of the 1994 U.S.-Canada-Mexico free trade deal, as well as a joint plan to draw billions in public and private investments for roads, bridges and ports along the U.S.-Mexican border, and a “re-adjustment” of the war on drugs.
That’s what Peña Nieto told me in a 40-minute interview, in which we also talked at length about his contested election victory, and the opposition claims that his party engaged in massive vote buying. Before we get into my own opinion on whether his plans for upgrading Mexico’s ties with Washington are realistic, let’s listen to what he had to say.
“I will seek to have a much more intense bilateral relation (with the United States) of greater collaboration, but above everything else of obtaining more and better results,” he said. “We must go beyond the three-country free trade agreement that we have today.”
Peña Nieto, 45, a former Mexico State governor married to a soap opera star who has little experience in foreign affairs, added that in a world of economic blocs, in which China and its neighbors are becoming major economic players, the three North American countries need to increase their economic integration in order to compete more effectively with Asia.
“Our geographic vicinity must be an advantage, rather than a threat,” he told me. “It must be an opportunity that must be taken advantage of.”
He said that he plans to do this through “an agreement among the heads of state” of North America, adding that “with the United States, we will have the advantage that we will be starting our administrations virtually at the same time, and that can help us define concrete goals for developing more infrastructure, greater connectivity, new ports.”
But how are you planning to convince the next U.S. president to invest in border infrastructure at a time of U.SA. economic hardship? I asked.
He answered that he is “optimistic” that the United States will see the economic advantage of stepping up cross-border supply chains so that U.S. companies can better compete in the global economy. He added that one of his main proposals will be to create public-private partnerships, in which the United States and Mexico would invite private sector companies to invest in roads and bridges along the border.
On the U.S.-backed war on drugs, which has left more than 50,000 deaths over the past five years, Peña Nieto said that there will be a “strategy adjustment.” Rather than only concentrating on capturing big cartel bosses, the new strategy will place a greater focus on combating violence, specifically going against those criminals who engage in homicides, kidnappings and extortion. “It means expanding our current policy, not changing it,” Peña Nieto said.
CONTINUE READING HERE....