The important queries

There is no term that is not fulfilled, nor debt that is not paid.

The start of consultations within the framework of the T-MEC marks the beginning of a new stage of this trilateral agreement, a corrected and augmented version of NAFTA. The current text, which was negotiated by the previous administration, contains provisions that must be complied with. Pacta sunt servanda, especially in the case of international commitments. Today, the whole world is pending respect for agreements and alliances of all kinds that are in force.

It turns out that in his first three years in office, López Obrador has taken pleasure in trying to establish his authoritarian vision of the government. In the first half of his six-year term, in addition to launching his most iconic projects, he has also been experiencing more frequent obstacles to his purposes. The popularity in the polls does not indicate his true electoral strength for 2024. As his time is short, he must choose between persisting in his intention to impose a regime of absolute national autonomy coupled with his well-known aversion to the North American and business that he can easily shake in the wise people, or, to recognize that societies are not transformed by simple decree, but after heavy sacrifices that, generally, the captive popular sectors bear with no other alternative than to endure.

The T-MEC aims to consolidate the validity of free enterprise capitalism in the North American continent. It postulates firm respect for private property and constrains the State to ensure favorable conditions for the private sector to successfully operate the mechanisms that create and maintain the items and services that the market requires. The conjugation of demand and supply form the equation that the private company is in charge of solving. The role of the public sector is limited as much as possible.

In this scenario of liberal economy, the financial factor becomes important compared to the producer factor. The resulting imbalance grows with its own dynamics and if it is not limited, it is inevitable that it will exceed in power and influence over the production sector.

The foregoing is in direct contrast to López Obrador’s worldview in which the government not only offers security and social justice. His attitude considers the governing function of the State to be essential to ensure that the supply-demand equation or the capital-labour articulation always operates to the benefit of the majority of the population.

The consultations that are beginning within the framework of T-MEC, which aim to resolve the clash of contrasting positions of the United States and Canada on energy matters and its repercussion in the increasingly sensitive area of ​​ecology, underline the contrast of visions. It is such a transcendental issue where the problem is aggravated, since the President has embraced a position of an old-fashioned and radical left, very alien to the vision of the modern left that has been maturing its positions less to the controversy and controversy of parties to address to better meet the daily needs of the people that are health, education, food and employment.

López Obrador has to attend to the most enormous needs of the population, for which it is necessary to straighten the course and, for example, implement a fiscal reform to provide the State with the resources it requires to attend to increasing responsibilities and to modernize its policy of foreign trade so that it is not limited to merchandise exchanges, but to promote new productions and employment.

The solution to the problems of backwardness in which Mexico and many countries find themselves lies in designing and executing programs within the inclusive channel so that everyone participates in development and well-being.

The consultations that are beginning have to admit the opinions of the United States and Canada, whose systems insist on imposing their economic structure on ours. The concept of sovereignty and, which the Mexican government constantly invokes and which places it on a collision course, must be understood within the framework of international cooperation in economic matters in the same way that it already exists in other matters such as the environment, whose importance is growing every day. This cooperation ensures an equitable distribution of benefits and prevents the interests of the strongest partners from prevailing.

The negotiation is difficult and its success will depend on the President, who apparently wants to radicalize the position, understands that the T-MEC is more important as a promoter of investment and occupation and thus the country will be better served.