Leftist Landslide In Mexico

-by Reese Erlich

When I was writing an article about street vendors in Mexico City, I saw firsthand how the country's ruling party operated. Vendors eke out a living selling trinkets and food on street corners. A group in one part of Mexico City had held a series of militant demonstrations opposing a violent police crackdown aimed at driving them out of that neighborhood.

The ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) gave a few of the movement's leaders government jobs, had them call off the demonstrations, and then quietly displaced the vendors as originally planned. Since 1929 the PRI has honed the art of repression and cooptation. The PRI, along with the right-wing National Action Party (PAN), had hoped to use those tactics during Mexico's July 1 presidential elections. It didn't work.

On Sunday democratic socialist Andrés Manuel López Obrador received a stunning 53 percent of the presidential vote, compared to 22 percent for PAN's Ricardo Anaya and 15 percent for PRI's Jose Antonio Meade. A leftist coalition, led by Lopez Obrador's National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), won a blowout 300 of 500 seats in the House of Deputies and between 56-70 in the 128-seat Senate.

Lopez Obrador, known by his initials AMLO, presented a progressive alternative to the corrupt leadership of the past. He drew support from blue collar workers, peasant farmers, small business people, a sector of the intelligentsia and some big business people alienated from the major political parties.

AMLO called for free education, pensions for seniors and improving the country's petroleum infrastructure. He also called for a massive tree planting project that he said would create 400,000 jobs.

"AMLO focused on a few key programs aimed at increasing Mexican economic independence from the US and generating jobs," Bruce Hobson told me. Hobson is an American political activist and analyst who has lived for decades Guanajuato, Mexico.

Lopez Obrador also benefited from widespread voter anger at the establishment political parties.

Student Eugenia Gonzalez, said “In truth, I don’t think any of them are worth much, but it’s better (to pick Lopez Obrador), who is a useful vote against the PRI.”

To Have and Have Not

AMLO's election represents a victory of the have nots over the haves. A wealthy elite in Mexico enjoy extravagant lifestyles in homes surrounded by high walls. Yet, of the country's 127.5 million people, a staggering 46 percent live below the poverty line.

Drug cartels control swaths of major cities with the cooperation of government officials. The last two presidents, PAN's Felipe Calderon and PRI's Enrique Peña Nieto, promised to end the narco violence, only to see it increase. Since 2006, over 200,000 people were killed in the drug wars and some 30,000 disappeared.

The most infamous case remains officially unsolved, the 2014 disappearance and murder of 43 student teachers from Ayotzinapa in the state of Guerrero. An international human rights report implicated federal officials in the disappearances and subsequent cover up.

AMLO put forward a great slogan: "bicarios si, sicarios no," which means "scholarship students yes, contract killers, no."

Move to the center

During the campaign AMLO downplayed his socialist politics and moved towards the center in an effort to pick up alienated PAN and PRI voters. He promised to appoint wealthy capitalist Alfonso Romo as his chief of staff and Harvard-educated economist Graciela Márquez as his economy minister.

AMLO also formed an electoral alliance with the far right, evangelical Social Encounter Party (PES), which on first view, seems an odd alliance. PES opposes abortion, gay marriage and homosexuality. But AMLO comes from a Catholic background and didn't campaign on women's rights issues. The coalition with PES may have given AMLO a few extra percentage points in the presidential race and in the legislative elections.

NAFTA

In 1993 I appeared on a Mexico City radio station to discuss NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. A pro-NAFTA businessman assured the audience that jobs would increase and the economy would improve overall. In reality, inflation shot up, and since implementation of NAFTA in 1994, poverty grew exponentially.

Farmers were driven off the land because of cheaper imports from the United States. Some U.S. and Canadian companies opened factories along the border, but the new jobs never replaced those lost to cheap U.S. imports.

"NAFTA devastated countless Mexican lives," said activist Hobson.

Nevertheless, the new Lopez Obrador administration will face a belligerent Trump, the continent's 800 pound gorilla. "AMLO has clearly expressed that he wants better economic and political relations with the United States based on equal partnership and respect," said Hobson. "This isn’t necessarily a bad thing."

Trump and AMLO can agree on some NAFTA changes, albeit for different reasons. Trump wants to raise hourly wages for auto workers in Mexico to $16/hour in order to encourage U.S. companies to keep more jobs at home. AMLO supports wage increase for Mexican auto workers.

However, NAFTA negotiations and Trump's absurd demand that Mexico pay for a border wall will remain major areas of conflict.

New president's future

On election night AMLO announced efforts to develop a peace plan, in consultation with UN human rights and religious organizations, that would help lessen drug cartel violence.

Javier Bravo, a history professor and MORENA activist, told me it won't be easy.

"Corruption is very deeply rooted in our political system," he said. "AMLO doesn't have a magic wand to change everything at once. It will be a long process."

Hobson said the rank and file will have to keep up the pressure for democratic and socialist policies within MORENA. Lopez Obrador exhibits some of the traits of a Latin American caudillo, or all powerful leader, he said.

Leftists within MORENA want the party "to undergo a cultural change so that leadership should be more collective," he said.

Hobson wants MORENA involved not just in electoral politics but to become rooted in the movements of indigenous people, women, gay/lesbian/trans, labor, counter-culture youth, and environmentalists.

Imagine for a moment if Bernie Sanders had won the 2016 presidential election. That would have been a tremendous step forward for the country, but only a first step towards fundamental change.

That's the admirable position now faced by the left in Mexico.

Señor Trumpanzee FARTs-- Fair and Reciprocal Tariff Act

Fucking Moron by Chip Proser

Mexico elected-- by a landslide-- a new president, a left-wing populist, in a landslide Sunday. Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Unlike Trump, whose election is arguably illegitimate, López Obrador can claim a mandate to make structural changes in his country.

• Obrador- 24,127,452 (53.0%)
• Anaya- 10,249,705 (22.5%)
• Meade- 7,472,431 (16.4%)
• Calderón- 2,339,431 (5.1%)
• Zavala- 64,643 (0.1%)

He was elected because he campaigned on a platform of change, a platform to change the status quo in a country beset by corruption, violence and enduring poverty. He agenda included free access to the Internet, a doubling of pensions for the elderly, educational grants for students, an increase in the minimum wage and subsidies for small farmers and single mothers. None of the candidates were fans of Trump or his policies. That said, let's turn to a draft of the America illegitimate president who claims a mandate to shake up the status quo even though most voters cast their ballots for his opponent:

• Hillary Clinton- 65,853,514 (48.2%)
• Donald Trump- 62,984,828 (46.1%)
• Gary Johnson- 4,489,235 (3.2%)
• Jill Stein- 1,457,226 (1.06%)
• Evan McMullin- 732,273 (0.53%)

That's not a mandate for structural change, although Trump is governing as though he had been elected in a massive landslide. He also campaigned on a platform of change. Trade was one of his issues, although, what he offered was a mishmash of incoherent ill-thought out ideas, populist slogans and emotional assertion of victimhood and blame, an agenda-- or at least its latest manifestation-- condemned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce this morning This morning Axios reported his latest attempt to blow up the status quo, the FART Act, "America’s abandonment of fundamental World Trade Organization rules." If Congress passes it-- unlikely-- it would prove Trump "license to raise U.S. tariffs at will, without congressional consent and international rules be damned. The bill, titled the "United States Fair and Reciprocal Tariff Act," would give Trump unilateral power to ignore the two most basic principles of the WTO and negotiate one-on-one with any country:

Trump was briefed on this draft in late May, according to sources familiar with the situation. Most officials involved in the bill's drafting-- with the notable exception of hardline trade adviser Peter Navarro-- think the bill is unrealistic or unworkable. USTR, Commerce and the White House are involved.

1- The "Most Favored Nation" (MFN) principle that countries can't set different tariff rates for different countries outside of free trade agreements;
2- "Bound tariff rates-- the tariff ceilings that each WTO country has already agreed to in previous negotiations.

"It would be the equivalent of walking away from the WTO and our commitments there without us actually notifying our withdrawal," said a source familiar with the bill.

• "The good news is Congress would never give this authority to the president," the source added, describing the bill as "insane."
• "It's not implementable at the border," given it would create potentially tens of thousands of new tariff rates on products. "And it would completely remove us from the set of global trade rules."

It's not going to happen. The only farting coming out of the White House will be Trump's when he eats fat food.

Trump was briefed on this draft in late May, according to sources familiar with the situation. Most officials involved in the bill's drafting-- with the notable exception of hardline trade adviser Peter Navarro-- think the bill is unrealistic or unworkable. USTR, Commerce and the White House are involved.

• In a White House meeting to discuss the bill earlier this year, Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short bluntly told Navarro the bill was "dead on arrival" and would receive zero support on Capitol Hill, according to sources familiar with the exchange.
• Navarro replied to Short that he thought the bill would get plenty of support, particularly from Democrats, but Short told Navarro he didn't think Democrats were in much of a mood to hand over moreauthority to Trump.

Spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said, "It is no secret that POTUS has had frustrations with the unfair imbalance of tariffs that put the U.S. at a disadvantage. He has asked his team to develop ideas to remedy this situation and create incentives for countries to lower their tariffs. The current system gives the U.S. no leverage and other countries no incentive."

• But Walters signaled that we shouldn't take this bill as anything like a done deal. "The only way this would be news is if this were actual legislation that the administration was preparing to rollout, but it’s not," she said. "Principals have not even met to review any text of legislation on reciprocal trade."
• Between the lines: Note the specificity of Walters' quote above. Trump directly requested this legislation and was verbally briefed on it in May. But he hasn't met with the principals to review the text.

Congress is already concerned with how Trump has been using his trade authorities-- just look at recent efforts by Republican Sens. Bob Corker and Pat Toomey and Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet to roll back the president's steel and aluminum tariffs.

The bottom line: As a smart trade watcher told me: "The Trump administration should be more worried about not having their current authority restricted rather than expanding authority as this bill would do."

Meanwhile, the U.S.'s biggest trading partner, Canada, just slapped a retaliatory tariffs, to the tune of $12.6 billion, on a wide variety of U.S. goods. "Some U.S. products, mostly steel and iron, face 25% tariffs, the same penalty the United States slapped on imported steel at the end of May. Other U.S. imports, from ketchup to pizza to dishwasher detergent, will face a 10% tariff at the Canadian border, the same as America's tax on imported aluminum."

Trump had enraged Canada and other U.S. allies by declaring imported steel and aluminum a threat to America's national security and therefore a legitimate target for U.S. tariffs. Canada is the United States' second-biggest trading partner in goods, just behind China.

Speaking Sunday in Leamington, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau thanked Canadians for standing united against President Trump's sanctions. He urged Canadians to "make their choices accordingly" in considering whether to buy American products.

The selection of Leamington, known as Canada's tomato capital, was no accident. The town is home to a food-processing plant that supplies tomato paste and other products to French's, a major competitor of Kraft Heinz. Heinz left Canada and sold its Leamington plant in 2014, after 105 years of Canadian operations.

The new Canadian tariffs, which took effect at 12:01 a.m. Sunday, are hitting a long list of U.S. consumer goods, including ketchup and other Kraft Heinz products.

As part of his combative “America first” approach, Trump has repeatedly attacked the trade policies of the United States' northern neighbor, citing Canada's triple-digit tariffs on dairy products, which account for only about 0.1% of U.S.-Canada trade. The United States, in fact, last year enjoyed a $2.8-billion overall trade surplus with Canada.

Trump has also tried to pressure Canada and Mexico into agreeing to rewrite the 24-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement to shift more auto production and investment to the United States. But that effort has stalled, and Trump said Sunday that he didn't expect a deal that he could support until after the U.S. midterm elections in November.

The Washington Post reported this morning that Señor T is defiantly standing by his tariffs "as Canada hit back hard, Mexico elected a new leader who seems prepared to confront him, and the European Union issued a scathing condemnation of his policy as 'in effect, a tax on the American people.' Instead of backing down, Trump brushed off the mounting pressure from businesses and world leaders to scale back the taxes before they cause additional job losses and slower economic growth."

Also this morning, the Wall Street Journal reported that farm belt, which helped deliver the White House to Trump, "drawn to his promises to revive rural America and deregulate industry," is feeling that his "global trade offensive is threatening the livelihoods of many farmers... Mounting trade disputes, spurred by U.S. threats to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement and tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of goods from key trading partners, have cut U.S. agricultural exports and sent commodity prices tumbling. Many farmers, who depend on shipments overseas for one-fifth of the goods they produce, say they are anxious, especially because they are already expecting bumper harvests or grappling with a dairy glut."