QUERETARO, Mexico, Nov. 8 (UPI) -- There were many doubts about him but now it is clear that U.S. President George W. Bush
, Dubbya to his friends, is legitimate. He himself, it can be seen in his appearances this week, is very happy about it.
The good news came via a scientific test Tuesday of voter opinion. The uncertainty that sprang from some dubious activity in Florida two years ago was lifted by American voters when they backed Bush's Republican Party on Tuesday.
Bush is a president made legitimate and therefore strengthened. But what does that mean for Mexico? Is Mexican President Vicente Fox still among those who can call Bush Dubbya?
The question is considered important in Mexico because the country is weighing up yet again its relations with the rest of the world and, most of all, those with the colossus to the north.
In his first year in office Fox's biggest triumph -- and perhaps his only one because it is hard indeed to achieve much in Mexico -- was scored north of the border. He was welcomed warmly by Bush and by the U.S. Congress. Much was made in the media of the personal bond between the two ranchers. Bush's Texas background and knowledge of Mexico and of the issues that matter to people in the border area were seen as big plusses in Mexico. The fact that Bush's brother, Jeb, the governor of Florida re-elected this week, is married to a Mexican also went down well, helping to allay Mexicans' fears that Americans have little respect for them. Yet now those deep-seated fears are again strong.
Consider this anecdote. When in Oct. 27 at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Baja California
, Fox and Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi announced that the two countries were going to sign a free trade agreement, four questions were permitted from the mostly Japanese and Mexican press present -- two for Fox, two for Koizumi. And it was clear that some prior organization had gone into these questions since the questioners apparently were preselected.
And thus a young woman reporter from a Mexican magazine asked Fox how the "disloyal practices" that had occurred in another free trade agreement -- now who might that have been with? -- could be avoided.
There would be no problem, Fox said, for Japan and Mexico were "two countries who respect one another." What Fox was doing was complaining in an oblique way but in language whose meaning would be clear to Mexicans about the disdainful treatment Mexico feels it has received from the United States.
What is Mexico troubled by? It did not like the ban placed on Mexican trucks by the U.S. Congress. This seemed unfair, and probably is. It feels that a number of the trade arrangements under the North American Free Trade Agreement are also unfair to Mexico. Chief among them are the arrangements on sugar. Mexico can export only a small amount of sugar to the United States while the high fructose corn syrup that American farmers produce -- sometimes with the help of the subsidies increased this year by Bush -- pours into Mexico where, odd though it may seem, sweet Coca-Cola, available everywhere and drunk everywhere by wealthy and poor
, masquerades as the national drink.
But nothing appears to have offended Fox more than the failure to reach an agreement on Mexican migration to the United States.
Now the question is how will U.S.-Mexican relations be affected by Bush's election success. Views differ. A stronger Bush at the polls is a Bush perhaps less concerned to chase the Hispanic vote -- which some would see, cynically, as the main reason for his earlier warmth to Fox. A stronger Bush is also a man freer perhaps to pursue a goal that means much to him: bringing about the downfall of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. And Iraq may remain the main item on Bush's busy agenda in coming months
, an agenda that may continue to sideline Fox and Mexico.
Then again
, perhaps Bush will now be in a better position to push Congress to welcome Mexican trucks and Mexican immigrants.
The prospects are unclear and will be a test of Bush's true attitude to Fox and to Mexico.
And what should Fox himself do? He would be wise to bury his resentment and to work on the numerous policy issues that need attention at home. For Mexico's salvation does not lie in Bush, but in itself.
The proposed trade agreement with Japan is an excellent innovation. One might not think it given the recent press coverage in Mexico but the Mexican economy has been strengthened enormously in the past eight years by NAFTA. While Argentine and Brazilian exports have floundered, those of Mexico have soared. That is the chief reason why Mexico's debt is much more manageable and its economy far more stable. Fostering trade with Japan would be an excellent way to build further.
But while trade has bolstered the Mexican economy
, much in domestic economic policy has lagged behind. The fiscal reform that Fox proposed throughout his first year and that was finally passed, amended and utterly distorted, by Congress at the end of 2001
, was hopeless, unworkable, and the government is now trying again.
It needs to get somewhere this time
, removing some VAT exemptions and reducing the government's dependence on revenues from oil.
This is urgent because the oil price could easily fall heavily once conflict with Iraq has either happened or has ceased to be a possibility.
And look, too, at policy on the protected oil and electricity sectors. This week Cintia Angulo, spokeswoman of the huge Electricite de France, said that EdF's investments in electricity plants are going "to other countries that provide us with more certainty and confidence such as China, South Korea, Poland and Hungary."
Why is it that Mexico's regulations for the electricity industry are less clear, less helpful to investors than those of communist China? Why is Mexico throwing away the opportunity to benefit from the huge investments that Electricite de France and other investors are willing to make?
The problem is nationalism and a fear of the outside world and of capitalism itself. In the oil sector, foreign investment is essential if Mexico is to produce, export and refine more crude, and draw more profit from the fact that it is already the world's fifth-largest producer -- and has the huge benefit of the ever-thirsty U.S. market next door.
These domestic reforms are the ones that can carry Mexico forward. An immigration accord can only be of minor benefit, even if symbolically it matters in Mexico. And with opening of the electricity and oil sector, Fox would have no difficulty keeping Bush's interest. The United States wants to buy Mexico's oil and would gladly reduce its dependence on the Middle East.
Perhaps
, in the end, the focus on how the gringos have been "disloyal" is little more than an escape from the far more difficult and vital political battles at home.
Inside Mexico is a weekly column in which our international economics correspondent reflects on the country in which he lives some of the time. Comments to
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