-Analysis-
Mexico’s outgoing president, the leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador (also known as AMLO) who sought an overhaul of Mexican society with his Fourth Transformation, wasn’t big on geopolitics. The best foreign policy is at home, was his reported motto.
The rare highlights of his foreign diplomacy since his 2018 election would include a leftward shift that warmed Mexico’s ties with Cuba and caused spats with conservative Latin American administrations, and, curiously perhaps, better ties with the Donald Trump administration in Washington than its Democratic successor, Joe Biden.
No fan of the NAFTA free-trade treaty, AMLO preferred protectionism and nationalizations of industry, even if he signed onto a tweaked version of NAFTA as a lifeline for the Mexican economy.
The question Monday in diplomatic corridors on both hemispheres of the planet is will Mexico’s global positioning change under AMLO’s hand-picked successor, Claudia Sheinbaum? Elected on June 2, Sheinbaum, will be Mexico’s first-ever woman president. A lifelong socialist from the president’s MORENA party, she insists she is not her mentor’s replica. She is perhaps best known for her environmental concerns and modest success in curbing violent crime in the capital as mayor of Mexico City.
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Chilean analyst Dorotea López Giral has told América Economía that López Obrador’s’s foreign policy “wasn’t particularly active, and he has had to deal with migration and organized crime as priorities.” López Giral adds that sustained regional integration didn’t particularly interest López Obrador, who tended to side with leftist politicians caught up in domestic turmoil, and was repeatedly accused of meddling in those countries’ internal affairs. None of his spats had notable benefits for Mexico.
Sheinbaum, says Peruvian academic and commentator Farid Kahhat, in turn has little experience in this field having worked in party politics and the grit of municipal affairs. Her limited diplomatic experience, he says, was as a member of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which entailed reporting to heads of government with “enough tact to allow this clientèle to accept her conclusions.”
Not Another AMLO
Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo is a scientist (PhD) by training, and was elected mayor of Mexico City in 2015, then in 2018 with 48% of all votes cast.
Her appeal was in great part for her close association with AMLO, a veritable icon of leftist Mexican politics, as well as for her competence in running the capital.
Academically, says López Giral, the incoming president is “highly prepared,” and may need her science in tackling the country’s socio-economic and environmental challenges. Mexico’s close business ties with the United States inside USMCA, the amended NAFTA pact, make it particularly sensitive to economic cycles to the north, and with the U.S. economy set to slow, the IMF expects Mexico’s economy to grow only 2.4% in 2024. Can this finance MORENA’s social programs or the European-style welfare state it envisages as part of its Fourth Transformation?
Sheinbaum is expected to continue AMLO’s policy of responsible spending or “republican austerity” while expanding basic social programs, promoting investment in infrastructures and consolidating the near-shoring trend so beneficial to Mexico.
Migratory flows toward the U.S.
The picture is of continuity then, without blind emulation. She recently told a television interview she was no copy of AMLO, but “we’re going to defend the same principles.” Their differences in style and substance may yet prove good, or bad, for Sheinbaum, says Kahhat. “López Obrador is leaving a poisoned legacy” in his failure to tackle problems of rampant crime and corruption. Some 30,000 people were murdered there in 2023.
In economic terms, Mexico has enjoyed a boon in recent years, which Kahhat says is not attributable to AMLO’s statesmanship, but rather commercial tensions between China and the United States. The picture may change in 2025, if Trump returns to the White House, as the United States will likely tighten enforcement of the rules of origin on goods sent from Mexico to the United States.
“Trump is concerned on the one hand with commercial deficits and the trade deficit with Mexico has grown,” Kahhat says. “Secondly, and Trump may have a point there, Mexico is profiting from the fight with China, but China has tried to get in” through the backdoor of Mexico.
The practice of Chinese firms investing in manufacturing in Mexico, then exporting their goods to the United States using the free-trade pact may become problematic under Trump, he adds. “López Obrador didn’t have these problems but Sheinbaum will,” he says.
The new president is also facing considerable environmental problems, including worsening drought, which may yet fuel migratory flows inside Mexico and toward the United States.
Worldcrunch Extra!
Special relationship
France’s Agence France-Presse recently described López Obrador’s foreign policy as a mix of negligence and self-interest. Some unfortunate highlights included an early spat with socialist-run Spain over the Spanish conquest of Mexico, and more recently, severed ties with Ecuador over the fate of an Ecuadorian opponent. García Aguilar expects Sheinbaum to be more pragmatic and less “egocentric” than AMLO, and believes she may act with the discretion of an Angela Merkel.
Sheinbaum’s 380-page campaign document (Cien pasos para la transformación – 100 Steps to Transformation) devoted just eight pages to foreign affairs. These set out how Mexico would boost its global standing with its presence in multilateral forums, and by backing its citizens abroad. No specifics there, although according to Rafael Nava y Uribe, a businessman involved in the technicalities of free-trade negotiations, the Sheinbaum administration may “give priority to revising” the latest NAFTA agreement, which must be updated in 2026.
The relationship with the U.S. may be the greatest challenges of Mexican foreign policy.
Sheinbaum will also pursue bilateral trade talks begun under AMLO with Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, South Korea and the United Kingdom, and talks on the adhesion of Canada, New Zealand and Australia to the Pacific Alliance, the trading pact that now includes Mexico, Colombia and Peru. Yet none of these has the crucial weight of Mexico’s trade and ties with the United States, which could lead to little action on any front until after the November elections.
Indeed this relationship may be the greatest challenge of Mexican foreign policy. Can it be truly independent of the United States when it must perpetually fear the possibility of the return tariffs on its U.S. exports? López Giral says “independence both in products and destinations is indispensable for a country’s long-term development.”
On the matter of frayed ties with Latin America, Kahhat says he hopes Sheinbaum “will not even try or have any success” seeking to emulate AMLO’s arrogant meddling in South American politics, without a thought for the Mexican national interest.
