Tied to the Political Case against Trump

President Donald Trump’s call to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, pressing the government of that country to investigate the son of Joe Biden, Barack Obama’s vice president, and so far, Trump’s main rival in the 2020 presidential election, has proved more serious for the U.S. president than any of his previous scandals and alleged crimes, from Russian intervention in elections to allegations of sexual abuse.

Trump may have violated numerous laws by insisting (a dozen times in a 30-minute call) that a foreign president do Trump a favor while he sought his own political gain, and exerting illegal pressure by previously blocking military aid to Ukraine. The fact that the whistleblower, who so far remains anonymous, was someone allegedly from the White House inner circle makes it even more serious.

For many, the fact that Trump is in serious trouble is reason enough for satisfaction, but the truth is that the Mexican government has been so very tied to the policies of the Republican president that Trump’s problems have become issues for Mexico’s domestic agenda. When Trump promoted “patriotism” over “globalization” at the United Nations this week, denouncing open borders and thanking Mexico for closing theirs, sending 27,000 soldiers (or so he said) to the shared border and drastically reducing migration, he did us no favor. Even less so when he said that all this showed how Mexico respected him.

At a meeting of the United Nations, where the world’s democracies are so attentive to the migration issue, the change in Mexico’s role is dramatic, from being a country that for obvious reasons has denounced the treatment of its migrants in United States, to ending up at the other end of the story defending Trump’s closed borders.

I know that the defense of our migrants has not exactly been abandoned and that the migratory restrictions (after the serious mistake of having fully opened the borders) is not only a consequence of Trump’s pressure. It is also necessary for the country’s security.

But the international community has understood it another way. Mexico’s fate was linked to Trump, and the U.S. president himself confirmed the connection this week when he said that if the political case against him advances, there will be no United States-Mexico–Canada Agreement, the new free trade agreement awaiting congressional approval by the United States and Canada.

The future of the Mexican economy depends a great deal on the implementation of the USMCA. Without a new treaty, there will be no new investments, and the economy will continue to remain as stagnant as it is today. There is no motivation for the Democrats, who control the House of Representatives, to approve the USMCA. It is a Trump administration negotiation, in which the administration continues to demand (to satisfy their voter base) greater advancement of unions in Mexico, adding human rights and immigration demands as well.

The Democratic agenda against Trump addresses these issues, and we are all, sadly, in Trump’s hands. And that’s how it will be until the presidential election in November 2020. Therefore, the USMCA will go away and we will remain tied to a restrictive immigration policy, with threats of tariffs if the Trump administration’s conditions are not met, with the issue of violence and drug trafficking hanging over us like a sword of Damocles that can be activated at any time.

Meanwhile, we have no capacity for defense, because President Andres Manuel López Obrador does not leave the country, disparages the international media, and does not attend any of the summits to defend Mexico’s position. (If failure to attend the Group of 20 summit of industrial and emerging market nations in Osaka was unfortunate, not going to the United Nations Assembly in New York is unsustainable.) Our presence in Latin America and Europe is diluted.

Along with China, we are dependent on how the country’s conflict with the U.S. evolves. Mexico’s overseas relations and agencies that promote our country have disappeared, and their resources are destined for the Mayan Train.* We do not have a clear or leading position, as we have had in the past, not even on the issue of global warming. It must be said that it is not the fault of Marcelo Ebrard, who is capably handling the work that he can. But a foreign minister cannot replace a clear foreign policy, much less a president who represents it with his presence and positions in the international arena.

*Editor’s note: The Mayan Train is a proposed 950 mile railroad in Mexico that would cross the Yucatan Peninsula.