Mexico is heading into 2024 bracing for a divisive election that could determine how business is conducted with the United States for decades to come.
And there will be one in the U.S., too.
Ildefonso Guajardo, the top foreign policy adviser to the opposition alliance’s presidential candidate, Xóchitl Gálvez, told The Hill his camp wants to restore key elements of the bilateral relationship that have been degraded under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
“Today, unfortunately, basically the channels of communication have been concentrated directly in the executive and using as a channel of communication the U.S. ambassador in Mexico,” said Guajardo.
Over the first five years of his term, López Obrador has systematically concentrated political power in the presidency, weakening the judiciary and independent agencies through structural reforms and budget cuts.
That centralized vision of power has made it more difficult for individual agencies on either side of the border to manage bilateral affairs, according to Guajardo.
“The work that has to be done in detail by every agency is displaced to a second place rather than be part of the everyday agenda that has to manage such a complex relationship. Therefore, nothing moves unless there is a commitment made by the executive and … it becomes a bottleneck,” he said.
From the mid-1980s until former President Trump came to power in 2016, U.S.-Mexico affairs had moved toward a doctrine of compartmentalization, where each issue was siloed and dealt with at peer-to-peer levels between each government’s agencies. So, for example, law enforcement issues would not bleed into trade disputes or talks on migration.
That paradigm was shattered in 2019 when, amid United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) negotiations, Trump threatened tariffs on Mexican goods “until illegal migrants coming through Mexico, and into our Country, STOP.”
