On Tuesday, February 20th, a planned visit by President Peña Nieto to the White House was called off after a 50 minute heated telephone conversation between our President and Donald Trump. It appears that our Foreign Minister Luís Videgaray, during a preparatory meeting with Jared Kushner – Trump’s son in law – had reached an agreement that the topic of the border wall, and who would pay for it, would not be mentioned during a scheduled March meeting between the two presidents. Well, six days later, on the telephone, that was the primary thing Trump wanted to talk about and when our President reminded him of Jared Kushner’s promise, Trump flew into a rage and during the ensuing 50 minute temper tantrum it was obvious that it would be futile to proceed with the planned meeting.
The consequences were not long in coming: on Saturday, February 24th, Trump ordered his Secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen to cancel her meeting on bilateral security with functionaries in Mexico City. This he followed up on Monday, February 26th, with the announcement that he, Trump, would personally inspect the 18 border wall prototypes near San Diego, decide which of them would be the most impenetrable and announce his decision within the next two weeks. Then, on Tuesday, February 27th he dropped a bombshell: In the middle of the 7th round of the NAFTA renegotiations, he ordered Jason Bernstein, the chief U.S. negotiator specialized in the automotive sector, to leave the negotiations and return to Washington immediately. It is said that he went to attend an emergency meeting with the board of directors of the most important automotive assembly companies of the United States where Ford Motor Company proposes to the United States rules against currency manipulations in NAFTA. But the fact is that Trump has used these types of strategies on previous occasions to threaten his counterpart and obtain large concessions that provide enormous benefits for his government. At the moment the negotiations are interrupted although officials of the Mexican and Canadian governments expect them to resume as soon as possible since it could bring more signs of uncertainty such as the loss of approximately twenty cents in the peso-dollar quotation, reaching up to 19 pesos per dollar.
On the other hand, most analysts now believe that this could signal the beginning of the end of negotiations with unforeseen consequences for the North American trilateral relationship, a prognosis which is reinforced by Trump’s fury over the upcoming signing ceremony of the Trans-pacific Association Trade Agreement in Santiago de Chile on March 8th. Under the leadership of China, and notably excluding the United States of America, eleven Pacific-rim nations will form a trade pact which will account for 32% of the world’s GDP and go into effect before the end of this year. Intensifying his ire, the Federal Judiciary of the U.S., at the highest level, stopped his evil plan to deport 1.8 million “Dreamers” who had entered the United States as small children with their undocumented parents. (it is estimated that 52 000 of them are from Puebla) In denying Trump a Writ of Certiorary, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand two Federal Temporary Restraining Orders (Amparos in Spanish) which guarantee protection for all “Dreamers” until all related litigation has ended – a process that could take 5 more years. Hopefully, by that time, Trump will no longer be in the White House!.
By: Dr. Juan Carlos Botello and Dr. Werner G.C. Voigt (Independent external Contributor)
