Andrés Manuel López Obrador

Tuesday January 10, 2023

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday January 10, 2023

Three Amigos Summit 2023

February 23, 2017

Mexico draws millions of international tourists each year with its sandy beaches, mountains, rainforests and rich culture.

But travelling anywhere can come with safety risks, as Canadians in the Mexican state of Sinaloa experienced last week following the Jan. 5 arrest of alleged drug trafficker Ovidio Guzman. Guzman is a son of former cartel boss Joaquin Guzman, also known as El Chapo. His capture resulted in explosions of violence in cities across the state, led by members of the Sinaloa cartel.

As a result of the violence in Sinaloa, the Canadian government has issued an advisory warning travellers to avoid non-essential travel to several states in northern, western and central Mexico and to exercise a “high degree of caution” in other parts of the country. (CTV News) 

November 18, 2021

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is hoping to champion North America free trade while settling trade irritants at the “Three Amigos” summit in Mexico City, but his priorities might be drowned out by more pressing border issues between the United States and Mexico.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is hoping to champion North America free trade while settling trade irritants at the “Three Amigos” summit in Mexico City, but his priorities might be drowned out by more pressing border issues between the United States and Mexico.

“I think as it’s currently framed, the North American Summit is a lot about Mexico,” said Maryscott Greenwood, CEO of the Canadian American Business Council, who noted that Biden preceded his visit to Mexico by inspecting a busy port of entry for migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.

In that context, Trudeau’s main challenge as he steps foot in Mexico City will be “to be relevant and to be heard,” added Greenwood.

March 23, 2005

“For Canada to be really heard and noticed, it has to have one priority and it has to be really aggressive about it. And I realize that’s sort of un-Canadian,” she said. “But that’s the way it goes with trying to capture the attention and the imagination of the United States, which has a lot going on.”

Speaking from Mexico City, Louise Blais, a former diplomat and now senior special adviser to the Business Council of Canada, said that while the border issues will be “distracting,” she thinks the Canadian delegation will manage to carve out time for the files it feels are important.

“So that’s a challenge, but that’s not to say that it won’t happen,” said Blais.

Trudeau arrived in Mexico City on Monday for a three-day visit, which will include bilateral meetings Tuesday with Biden and Lopez Obrador as well as meetings with business leaders. (The National Post) 

 

Thursday November 18, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday November 18, 2021

Now it’s Biden, not Trump, giving Trudeau grief

The political bromance that was supposed to blossom between Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden has so far been a bust.

November 3, 2020

When Americans turfed Donald Trump in last November’s presidential election and sent Biden to the White House, you could almost hear a collective sigh of relief across Canada. A dark, dangerous cloud that had hovered over this country for four years had been blown away. With two progressive, seemingly compatible leaders at the helm of the North American neighbours a new era of amiable bilateral relations seemed guaranteed.

But that hasn’t come to pass. And so Prime Minister Trudeau will have his work cut out for him when he heads to Washington for Thursday’s summit with President Biden and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

Despite all his friendly smiles, Biden has yet to prove he’s a real friend to this country. Relations are strained and he’s making them worse. There’s an infrastructure bill packed with Buy American provisions that could bar Canadian businesses from bidding on billions of dollars worth of projects in the U.S. Biden loves it.

July 22, 2021

Another bill would offer huge incentives for American consumers to purchase made-in-the-U.S. electric vehicles instead of buying Canadian-manufactured models. Biden is all for it. If Congress passes the bill, car makers would obviously be more inclined to invest in American electric vehicle plants than Canadian ones. Then what will happen to all those dreams of a bright new Canadian electric-vehicle sector?

No wonder Flavio Volpe, president of Canada’s Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association, says the proposed incentives are “a bigger threat than anything pointed at us by Donald Trump” — including all the tariffs he imposed and the disruptive free-trade battle he engineered.

Meanwhile, the State of Michigan is still trying to shut down Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline which transports vital supplies of Western Canadian petroleum to Ontario and Quebec. If this threat to Canada has caught Biden’s eye, he’s done nothing about it. And if the list of bilateral sore-points isn’t long enough already, the American government moved this spring to double tariffs on Canadian lumber.

April 30, 2021

Clearly American protectionism has again reared its ugly head. And this despite the years of struggles during the Trump era to reach the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement which, by the way, does not permit those American electric-vehicle incentives.

It should be a given that Trudeau will raise these issues with Biden this week. But the president will be more preoccupied with pressures coming from within his own deeply divided country. After just 10 months in office, his approval ratings have plummeted. The control his Democrats have over Congress is precarious and could be lost after next year’s mid-term elections. And those Buy American incentives are widely popular south of the border with progressive Democrats, unions, consumers and, when it comes to electric vehicles, environmentalists.

February 23, 2021

Trudeau will be swimming upstream against powerful currents to alter these trends. He does, however, have leverage. With an increasingly assertive China responsible for Biden’s biggest international headache, Trudeau should remind him Canada and Mexico can help build a “Fortress North America” as an economic and political counterweight to that rising superpower. With Canadian and Mexican co-operation, Biden could also have a better chance of successfully fighting climate change, which would thrill much of his voter base.

Beyond these measures, Trudeau should adopt a strategy that worked with Trump: start sending his federal cabinet ministers and Canadian business leaders to meet with and lobby their American counterparts.

Considering all the differences between them, it may be too much to hope for another “Three Amigos Summit” this week. We’d settle for a co-operative, congenial neighbourly get-together. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

Tuesday November 19, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday November 19, 2019

Pelosi hints that a USMCA deal might be near. It’s a wise move for Democrats

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) suggested both that President Trump may be impeachable due to “bribery” and gave her strongest signal yet that the House Democratic leadership is close to a deal with the White House that would enable the passage of Mr. Trump’s update to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In fact, she said those two seemingly contradictory things within the same news conference. Politics is indeed a strange and wondrous business.

June 22, 2019

Thank goodness. Governability can no longer be taken for granted in Washington, much less actual legislation. The impeachment of Mr. Trump along what are so far highly partisan lines threatened to deepen the dysfunctionality, despite promises from Ms. Pelosi and other Democratic leaders that the House could “walk and chew gum at the same time.” Ms. Pelosi’s optimistic words regarding the NAFTA revision, which Mr. Trump calls the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), were clearly carefully chosen and confirm that she was serious about her pledge to continue attending to the people’s business while the hearings proceed. This is a tribute also to the several dozen moderate members of her caucus, many first-termers elected from swing districts, who recognize that it is in their interest — as well as the country’s — to preserve stability in the hemispheric economy.

December 4, 2018

Stability is the operative word. Though highly unpopular in many quarters, especially the (often Democratic-leaning) industrial heartland — where it was blamed for loss of jobs to lower-wage Mexico — NAFTA, for better or worse, legally defines the multitrillion-dollar economic relationship among the United States and its two neighbors. To blow it up and revert to the higher-tariff status quo ante, as Mr. Trump threatened to do both in his 2016 campaign and as president, would have been disastrous.

On the other hand, having gone into effect in 1994, NAFTA was due for modernization, particularly to take account of new developments in e-commerce. Therefore, when Mr. Trump agreed to engage with Mexico and Canada in a renegotiation of the deal, it was wise for Democrats not to dismiss the effort out of hand, even if it might mean ultimately having to share credit with a Republican president for an initiative they had long promised to mount themselves.

October 2, 2018

On the merits, Mr. Trump’s deal is a tweak to NAFTA, disproving his hyperbole about how bad the old agreement was and how good his new one will be. It does indeed improve e-commerce rules and crack Canadian dairy protectionism. For the most part, though, the USMCA deal is about managed trade, not free trade. Its key provisions would set minimum autoworker wages in Mexico and guarantee higher North American content for cars and trucks made in the three signatory countries, so as to protect U.S. Jobs.

The realistic alternative, though, is a rupture with Mexico and Canada, which is why Ms. Pelosi and the moderates in her caucus are right to work with Mr. Trump, and why we hope they will see the USMCA through to House passage, send it to the GOP Senate for likely approval — and then move on to other business, impeachment included. (Washington Post)