In 2023, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is starting to look like an incompetent and unreliable business partner. Political risk analyst Ian Bremmer, recently compared Lopez Obrador to Donald Trump. Ryan Berg, the Americas Director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank based in Washington, DC, recently explained that a recent wave of nearshoring investment is happening “despite” Lopez’s leadership. Obrador, not because of this. During March, 2023 several English news outlets published articles that raised serious questions about Lopez Obrador’s competence and reliability as a business partner.
On March 1, the Courthouse News Service published this article about President Lopez Obrador’s struggles to achieve his policy goals and eliminate corruption. Cody Copeland explains, “federal auditors announced that they found ‘irregularities’ amounting to more than 15 billion pesos (US $816 million) in [Segalmex] and its distribution subsidiaries Diconsa and Liconsa as of 2019. That number more than doubles the previous Mexican government embezzlement record.”
On March 6, The New York Times published this article about the US government’s plan to formally dispute President Lopez Obrador’s plan to ban corn imports from the US In the article Ana Swasnon and Linda Qui explain, “Senior [Biden] Administration officials have expressed concerns to the Mexican government about the measures for more than a year in virtual and in-person meetings, saying they could disrupt millions of dollars in agricultural trade and cause severe damage to US producers. President Lopez Obrador signed the NAFTA update, USMCA, and will soon be forced to navigate the agreement’s dispute resolution mechanism. It is not yet clear whether Lopez Obrador is willing to continue his nationalist policies even if it means accepting new tariffs on Mexican exports.
On March 20, Reuters published this article explaining that Mexican President Lopez Obrador seized a port owned by a US-based company (Vulcan Materials) to import of gravel ballast from Cuba for the diesel-powered tourist train he built through clean rain. forest in southern Mexico. In a statement, Vulcan executives explained, “We are shocked [at] the entities of the Mexican government that support this reckless and despicable armed seizure of our private property.”
On March 21, The Economist published this article looking at the future of North American manufacturing. The article points to Lopez Obrador’s lack of interest in actively developing a coordinated strategy to help attract new investment and coordinate industrial development. The article explains, “There are some federal incentives for investment. Some states offer cheap land, but not the tax breaks that most of their American counterparts do. However, this lack of support is more likely to slow the water than to stop it.” Even without guidance from Lopez Obrador, Mexico’s manufacturing sector continues to run on auto-pilot.
On March 27, the Associated Press published an article explaining that Lopez Obrador’s government has introduced new textbooks that include explanations of people’s grammatical errors such as “hicistes” and “dijistes.” Lopez Obrador seeks to consolidate the support of voters with low levels of formal education and often despises Mexico’s middle class. Recent polls show that 72% of Mexican farm workers approve of Lopez Obrador, while only 36% of professionals view him favorably. During a recent press conference, Lopez Obrador mocked the snobbery of Mexico’s highly educated middle class. “They want us all to talk like physicists, with technicalities,” he explained.
Further reading: President Lopez Obrador Wastes Mexico’s Economic Potential
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