WASHINGTON – Only days into President Joe Biden’s White House tenure, leaders in Mexico and the U.S. are looking to reset a relationship that’s not only fundamental to America’s foreign policy, but also critical to Texas’ economy, security and culture.
The reboot is not just about moving beyond former President Donald Trump, the Republican who delighted in bullying Mexico over everything from immigration to trade to border security.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador – who enjoyed a good working relationship with Trump, despite many policy differences – has also complicated relations in recent months by showing an unmistakable frostiness toward Biden. The Mexican president stood out as one of the last foreign leaders in the world to congratulate the Democrat on his victory.
“That was just foolish,” said Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, calling the snub “unfortunate.”
AMLO, as he’s known, has further mystified and frustrated some officials with more substantive action. He’s raised hackles in the U.S. of late, for instance, by signing a law to restrict American drug agents in Mexico and lashing out against U.S. officials who accused the former Mexican defense secretary of working with a Mexican drug cartel.
While some posit that López Obrador, elected in 2018, is simply trying to ward off the new U.S. administration from meddling in Mexico’s messy internal affairs, political and business leaders on both sides of the border are now seeking to smooth over a rocky transition.
The nature of the relationship demands it.
Martha Bárcena, the outgoing Mexican ambassador to the U.S., described the two countries as “an old married couple that has to find a way of always learning to get along.” Bárcena, who will leave her post next month, added that “divorce is not an option.”
“There will be ups and downs, but we will have to get along,” said the ambassador, who will be replaced by Esteban Moctezuma, a former senator who was Mexico’s education secretary. “But at the end of the day, we must get along, find common interest, take the high ground.”
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Texas, which shares a 1,254-mile border with Mexico, has much at stake.
The state’s location puts it on the forefront of an ongoing Central American migration crisis and at the center of perennial debates over border security. An estimated two-thirds of all binational trade also comes through Texas — nearly $400 billion in 2019 alone – supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs in sectors ranging from manufacturing to trade to energy.
Communities along the Texas-Mexico border are stitched together economically and culturally, meaning that issues like the COVID-19 pandemic transcend any line on a map.
“Real, substantive and constructive re-engagement between the U.S. and Mexico is critical to Texas,” said Tony Garza, a former U.S. ambassador to Mexico under former President George W. Bush and now a counsel to White & Case in Mexico City.
The Trump era, defined by the president’s mercurial approach, tested those binational ties.
The businessman launched his campaign in 2015 with a speech that disparaged many Mexican migrants as rapists and criminals. He made a border wall his signature campaign pledge, boasting that Mexico would pay for it. He vowed to terminate the North American Free Trade Agreement, a lynchpin between the U.S., Mexico and Canada that he dubbed as the “worst trade deal ever.”
Once in office, Trump threatened to shut down the border and raise tariffs on Mexican goods – actions that would’ve devastated both countries and the Lone Star State, in particular.
But Trump didn’t question Mexico’s endemic corruption, drug violence or the killing of Mexican journalists. He didn’t abandon NAFTA, instead negotiating a revamp that mostly preserved and updated the trade pact. While Trump succeeded in getting Mexico to use its troops to block migrant caravans, he never managed to make Mexico pay for his border wall.
AMLO, while often ceding to Trump’s demands on issues like immigration, never really engaged his American counterpart’s bluster.
“He didn’t take the bait,” said Austin Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee who said he was among those who advised Mexican officials to not overly fixate on Trump’s hard-edged rhetoric.
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The two presidents, though from opposite ends of the political spectrum, also shared some commonalities.
Both promoted unabashed nationalism, building passionate bases with their own versions of populism. Both blasted the media as “fake news” as they wielded their own bully pulpits. Both belittled COVID-19 guidelines, only to then contract the virus themselves.
The relationship still confounded many observers.
“I could never understand it,” said Rep. Henry Cuellar, a conservative Laredo Democrat who’s worked with Mexican officials in AMLO’s administration and those prior. “I told his people, ‘I just don’t understand this after he called y’all all these names.’”
Cuellar recalled how AMLO refused to meet House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats when he visited D.C. in July to celebrate implementation of the new North American trade deal, instead hanging out at the White House with Trump and other Republicans.
The Democrat -- bullish, even then, about the White House race -- said he warned Mexican officials that there would soon be a new Oval Office occupant.
“Now they’re working to repair that relationship,” Cuellar said. “Now they’re working overtime.”
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Biden, even with López Obrador’s pokes, never was likely to taunt Mexico or tap out insults on Twitter.
“I have absolutely no doubt that President Biden is going to extend the hand of friendship and collaboration,” said Escobar, the El Paso Democrat, adding her hope that López Obrador “will reciprocate.”
The U.S. president is an experienced foreign policy hand who once served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Biden is no stranger to Mexico, either, having led the U.S. delegation in 2012 to the inauguration of then-Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.
Biden has stoked optimism by reportedly tapping Roberta Jacobson, a former U.S. ambassador to Mexico and a longtime seasoned Latin American expert, to oversee issues related to the southern U.S. border on the National Security Council.
AMLO was also among the first world leaders that Biden called from the White House.
“I feel confident we will be in good hands,” said Alfredo Duarte, president of Taxco Produce, a leading importer of Mexican produce in North Texas. “We’ll have people who actually know what they’re doing and what’s really at stake between both countries. No more crazy talk.”
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But a more engaged, if less bombastic, U.S. president also brings a different dynamic.
Biden, amid GOP criticism, is already using executive action to unravel some of Trump’s immigration policies, including the so-called “remain in Mexico” program, as officials in the U.S. and Mexico brace for another potential surge in migration from Central America.
While those moves are likely to be well received by AMLO, it’s unclear how Biden might lean on Mexico -- and how AMLO, now with leverage, might respond -- if there’s another crisis.
Biden may also prove to be more aggressive than Trump would’ve been in enforcing environmental and labor provisions that were included in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the rebooted trade deal, at the insistence of congressional Democrats.
McCaul, the Austin Republican, recently had dinner with Bárcena, the outgoing Mexican ambassador to the U.S. She expressed her worry that Biden would try to re-litigate parts of the accord, McCaul said, telling the congressman to “please make sure the USMCA stays intact.”
“That was really her strongest message,” said McCaul, a free trade advocate who joined every Texan in Congress in voting in favor of the pact.
AMLO also remains something of a wild card, particularly if he keeps sending brush-back pitches Biden’s way.
McCaul worried that AMLO will “lean a little more on the socialist side,” bolstering state-owned energy companies at the expense of U.S. firms’ investments. Cuellar, in response to Mexico’s drug enforcement moves, said he’s reminded Mexican officials that the “U.S. is not the enemy.”
Arturo Sarukhan, a former Mexican ambassador to the U.S., said the “core challenge” is whether AMLO takes of advantage of the moment to seek a holistic diplomatic reboot or instead defaults to a relationship “insulated and stove-piped into neat bins of domestic and foreign policy issues.”
Bárcena said she generally felt “moderately optimistic” about the relationship between her boss and Biden. But Javier Garza, a journalist in Torreon, Coahuila, and a media commentator on security issues, warned of the prospect that AMLO’s “nationalism will flourish again.”
“We still don’t know how he will react, and that is the problem for a relationship like the Mexico-US that needs certainty,” he said. “Just as we feared in 2016 the unpredictability of Donald Trump, now we must fear the unpredictability of López Obrador.”
Benning reported from Washington, while Corchado reported from El Paso.
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