{"id":5914,"date":"2017-01-27T10:12:49","date_gmt":"2017-01-27T16:12:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=5914"},"modified":"2017-01-27T10:12:49","modified_gmt":"2017-01-27T16:12:49","slug":"whats-pena-nietos-agenda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/01\/whats-pena-nietos-agenda.html","title":{"rendered":"What’s Pena Nieto’s agenda?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"from<\/p>\n

In the news yesterday were reports (e.g., CNN<\/a>) that Mexican President\u00a0Enrique Pena Nieto cancelled a planned meeting with President Trump (yeah, it\u2019s crazy to write that!) after disputes over Trump\u2019s plan to build a wall and pass on the costs to Mexico.<\/p>\n

Now, it seems to me that back during the election, pundits liked to say of Trump\u2019s \u201cMexico will pay for it\u201d claim, that he was just staking out a negotiating posture, so that, in the end, the Mexican government would come back with something like, \u201cOK, fine, build the wall if you want, but we won\u2019t pay for it.\u201d \u00a0But it seems that Pena Nieto\u2019s objection is to far more than a wall, but to Trump\u2019s plans to cut off illegal immigration and deport criminals. \u00a0According to CNN:<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve asked for the minister of Foreign Relations to re-enforce protection measures to our citizens,\u201d [Pena Nieto] said. He added that the 50 Mexican consulates in the US will be used to defend the rights of immigrants in the country and issued a call to action to legislators and civic organizations to help immigrants.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

CNN also reported,<\/p>\n

In a Monday speech, Pe\u00f1a Nieto said his government is prepared to negotiate with the US if Mexico\u2019s national sovereignty is respected. He laid out economic integration and respect for the rights of migrants and the money they send home as his nation\u2019s key negotiating points.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And I\u2019ve read time and again that Mexican migrants in the U.S. send large sums of money back home, that the Mexican government actively works, through the consulates and other outreach activities, to keep Mexicans in the U.S. connected to Mexico to keep the money flowing, that some villages are nearly completely lacking in young men, since they have all left for America and send money back to their parents. \u00a0And\u00a0CNN reported<\/a> just the other day that remittances are so high that the cash brought in exceeds that of Mexico\u2019s oil imports.<\/p>\n

Oh, and the populist candidate in Mexico\u2019s 2018 presidential election,\u00a0Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has called for the Mexican government to file a lawsuit \u201cat the U.N.\u201d over the wall, as a \u201cviolation of human rights,\u201d is planning a tour of the U.S. to speak to Mexicans there, and calls out in his rallies<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cGo and fight for liberty, represent our people with dignity and all human beings who dream of a just world. . . Defend the migrant Mexican workers, long live the immigrants!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Which all paints a picture of a country in such dire straights that it relies on the money brought in by migrants to keep its people fed, and so desperate to keep this pipeline flowing that it will do whatever it can to keep the border open, both through its own policy actions and by calling on Mexicans in the United States and their supporters to oppose the wall.<\/p>\n

But so far as I can tell, keeping NAFTA in place is far more crucial to the Mexican economy.<\/p>\n

The amount of remittances sounds large when compared to oil exports, but this is only 2.3% of the Mexican GDP. \u00a0For your reading pleasure, take a look at this table from the World Bank<\/a> with remittance percentages for all countries. \u00a0This highest percentage is in Nepal, 31.8%. \u00a0In the Americas, Haiti is at 25%, Honduras 18%, El Salvador 16.6%, Guatemala 10.3%, and Nicaragua 9.4%. \u00a0Looks to me like the biggest remittance-related risk of wall-building and border-sealing is not that Mexico would lose its inflows but that it would be facing its own illegal immigration problem if Central Americans flock there instead of the U.S. \u00a0(But we\u2019re told that immigrants are great for building the economy, right?)<\/p>\n

Manufacturing, on the other hand, has seen massive growth since the introduction of NAFTA in 1994. \u00a0According to fivethirtyeight.com\u2019s summary<\/a>,<\/p>\n

Mexico\u2019s economy has long depended on trade with the U.S., and those ties have only deepened since 1994, when the North American Free Trade Agreement lowered trade barriers between the two nations. Mexican exports more than quadrupled since NAFTA went into effect; they accounted for 37.5 percent of Mexico\u2019s gross domestic product in 2015 (they make up just 12.3 percent of the U.S. economy), and more than 80 percent of those exports go to the U.S. Mexico is now the world\u2019s fourth-largest car exporter, and the automobile industry directly employs almost 900,000 workers across the country.<\/p>\n

Free trade \u2014 along with relatively skilled but cheap labor \u2014 has also drawn businesses and their investment dollars into the country. For the past two decades, Mexico has been Latin America\u2019s second-largest recipient, after Brazil, of what economists call foreign direct investment \u2014 foreign companies building factories, buying businesses or investing in Mexican companies. In 2015 alone, Mexico received a total of $32 billion dollars in FDI, $17 billion of it from the United States.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is where the real money is. \u00a0Is Pena Nieto so determined to preserve the flow of migrants to the U.S., and money back, that he\u2019ll imperil the country\u2019s export economy?<\/p>\n

Breitbart claims<\/a> that Pena Nieto has a hidden motive: \u00a0that he really wants to keep the drug cartels in business because they funded his campaign. \u00a0How plausible is this? \u00a0I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

But for Mexico to stake its relationship with the U.S. on the continuation of a semi-open border? \u00a0It seems shortsighted.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image: \u00a0from pixabay.com; https:\/\/pixabay.com\/en\/border-mexico-usa-united-states-62866\/<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the news yesterday were reports (e.g., CNN) that Mexican President\u00a0Enrique Pena Nieto cancelled a planned meeting with President Trump (yeah, it\u2019s crazy to write that!) after disputes over Trump\u2019s plan to build a wall and pass on the costs to Mexico. Now, it seems to me that back during the election, pundits liked to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":5276,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[539,541,542,540],"class_list":["post-5914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-mexico","tag-pena-nieto","tag-remittances","tag-the-wall"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat's Pena Nieto's agenda?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In the news yesterday were reports (e.g., CNN) that Mexican President\u00a0Enrique Pena Nieto cancelled a planned meeting with President Trump (yeah, it's\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/01\/whats-pena-nietos-agenda.html\" \/>\n<meta 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