The chances that López Obrador's heir candidate will become the first female president of Mexico this Sunday are very high. There is also uncertainty regarding how their behavior will be in foreign policy regarding the advancement of trade agreements and their participation in regional blocs, such as the Pacific Alliance.
“The best foreign policy is the internal one.” The phrase by Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) is a good example that the Mexican president, who is still in office, did not show great interest in the international arena and that, when he did, he generally sparked some controversy with his statements.
But the mega elections this Sunday, June 2, give her political heir, Claudia Sheinbaum, the winner with a range of 11 to 22 points, which justifies wondering what the new president's foreign policy could be like.
On the one hand, AMLO leaves a history of controversies and omissions in this regard.
“President López Obrador's foreign policy has not been particularly active, and he has had to confront migration and organized crime, as a priority. Clearly, regional integration is not one of its pillars, there has been a crisis with some countries,” Dorotea López Giral, international analyst and director of the Institute of International Studies (IEI) of the University of Chile, explains to AméricaEconomía .
But the truth is that she has little experience in these matters.
“She was governor of Mexico City and that doesn't give you particularly international contact. But he was part of the UN intergovernmental panel on climate change, [a position in which] he has to be accountable to heads of government and he has to be tactful enough so that his conclusions are accepted by that clientele,” says Farid Kahhat, professor. from the Catholic University of Lima .
“I AM NOT A COPY OF AMLO”
Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo has a degree in physics from UNAM, has a doctorate in energy engineering and during part of AMLO's term as mayor of Mexico City, she served in his cabinet as Secretary of the Environment. In 2015, Sheinbaum was elected mayor of a district of Mexico City and won the race for mayor of Mexico City in 2018 with 48% of the votes.
His close association with AMLO and the improvements in security in the Mexican capital contributed to giving him an advantage in the polls, over the other possible candidate, who was Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard.
Sheinbaum is running as part of a coalition between Morena, which includes mainly low-income voters, as well as some social progressives the Labor Party (PT) and the Green Ecologist Party of Mexico (PVEM).
“Claudia Sheinbaum is a woman who is very academically prepared, with an outstanding political career, founder of the Morena party, always very close to López Obrador from the beginning and especially a participant in the fourth transformation (the promise of historical change, in pursuit of justice social, which led him to win in 2018)”, adds Dorotea López.
But if victory this Sunday seems easy, thanks to the shadow of his mentor and current president, the country that Sheinbaum would inherit is a scene of great economic, social and environmental challenges.
In 2023, Mexico grew less than expected and the prospects with the slowdown in the United States for 2025 mean that the IMF has reduced the growth expectation to 2.4% for 2024, spending on social programs has been very high, and an increase in tax collection is not expected.
Furthermore, the media have recalled the old Mexican maxim: in an election year, public investment goes up, in the first year of the new mandate it goes down. This is because reality always exceeds campaign promises, and because the fiscal fund begins with a decrease due to that expense that "prepared the way."
According to an analysis by the specialized media Americas Quarterly , Sheinbaum has promised to maintain AMLO's “republican austerity,” but at the same time expand basic social welfare programs and promote investment in strategic infrastructure and nearshoring . It would invest $13.6 billion in new renewable energy projects, and its government program includes plans to support Mexico's state-owned energy companies focused on fossil fuels.
“There is an energy challenge to be able to face nearshoring (the relocation of supply chains to Mexico) that could be strengthened; she has proposed the search and implementation of renewable energies consistent with her environmentalist training. Health and water are two other fronts that will be part of his mandate at the national level. And the challenge of being the first woman is not minor,” says Dorotea López.
Additionally, Sheinbaum has said he would strengthen the National Guard, which AMLO created in 2019, and replicate some of the crime reduction strategies he implemented in Mexico City, improving coordination between state and federal authorities, investing more in intelligence and trying to address the root causes.
She herself has said in a televised interview that she is not a copy of AMLO, “but we are going to defend the same principles.”
And in that difference lies the challenge.
“[Sheinbaum] does not have the charisma of López Obrador. And I don't mean sympathy, but she has a type of connection with popular sectors that I don't know if she will have," highlights Farid Kahhat, who adds that "López Obrador leaves a poisoned legacy."
With this, Kahhat refers to issues such as corruption, indicated by 80% of Mexicans as a major problem, in addition to citizen security and out-of-control drug trafficking that has left 30,000 homicides in 2023.
On the contrary, there are positive things, such as the independence of the Central Bank to keep inflation within a range. “And in general they have not had irresponsible fiscal management, López Obrador. Their public investment priorities, such as the Mayan Train, may be questioned...But the economy has performed relatively well also due to a factor that has nothing to do with López Obrador, which is the benefit for Mexico from the trade conflict between China and the United States. ”, details the academic.
But faced with an eventual next Trump government - starting in January 2025 - the T-MEC will bring stricter rules of origin.
“On the one hand, Trump is concerned about trade deficits and the trade deficit with Mexico has grown. And two, and there Trump may have a legitimate point, Mexico benefits from the conflict with China, but China has sought to enter through the [Mexican back] door,” he adds.
This being the case, Kahhat considers that with Trump in the presidency it could be debatable that Chinese companies invest in Mexico for production made in Mexico and export to the United States under the trade agreement.
“López Obrador did not have those problems, but Sheinbaum will have them,” he highlights.
Another emerging problem for the new administration is the complex water panorama, which hits the country not only with heat waves and droughts, but can have harsh effects on the economy and migration within Mexican soil.
ONLY THE T-MEC?
The pleasure of speaking in his 'morning' conferences and his particular style between relaxed and challenging, would allow a book to be written solely on AMLO's opinions regarding foreign policy.
Far from the famous 'Estrada Doctrine', (the name of a central ideal of Mexico's foreign policy since 1930 and still in force, according to which Mexico does not publicly announce diplomatic recognition of other states or governments) a recent analysis of the France Presse Agency , qualifies AMLO's international management between negligence and self-interest.
"The big problem is that Andrés Manuel has this idea that the most immediate thing to solve, he can solve, as if we were isolated from the world, and that has caused Mexico to have had a time in which, with very few exceptions, it did not has had an important international presence, on the contrary," said José Luis García Aguilar, professor of International Relations at the Universidad Iberoamericana Puebla, on France 24 .
From the disagreement with the Spanish Government headed by Pedro Sánchez, demanding that he apologize for the colonial past to the most recent diplomatic scandal with the Government of Daniel Noboa in Ecuador, AMLO would have "a history of international disagreements during his period."
“López Obrador is also a guy with a big ego. I don't notice that in Sheinbaum. She is more talkative and less worried. That's something I remember a lot about Angela Merkel. She could be insulted and said, 'Well, Germany's interests come before my ego. 'I will ignore the insult and try to deal with the issue in the best possible way for Germany's interests.' I think Sheinbaum is more like Merkel than, luckily, [Marcelo] Ebrard or López Obrador. And although she comes from the left, in the end I think she is already more pragmatic than López Obrador,” he emphasizes.
Kahhat does make one caveat and that is that a change has been seen in Mexican foreign policy since another woman, Alicia Bárcena, the former executive secretary of ECLAC, came in as chancellor to manage Mexican foreign policy.
But it is difficult for there to be continuity for Bárcena in the new government.
“The name of Juan Ramón de la Fuente has been mentioned on several occasions to occupy the Ministry [of Mexican Foreign Affairs], and he has also been in charge of the transformation dialogues with the diplomatic corps,” says Dorotea López.
Our magazine contacted Sheinbaum's command to find out in detail their positions, however, they excused themselves from participating due to the proximity of the end of the campaign.
In his government program, of about 380 pages, Sheinbaum only dedicates eight to the international issue.
In the document, called '100 steps for transformation', it mentions that it will seek to strengthen Mexico's leadership role, extending its influence globally, with Presence in Multilateral Forums, as well as the protection of Mexicans abroad and support on issues migratory.
There is no mention of trade agreements or specific sectors in that section of your program.
However, at the end of this week there is much more light on the international movements of the future president Sheinbaum. And the news is that Mexico “will give priority to the review of the Treaty between Mexico, the United States and Canada (T-MEC) over other trade agreements to be negotiated,” highlighted Rafael Nava, coordinator of technical barriers to trade of the so-called Cuarto de Junto, a negotiating arm of the Business Coordinating Council (CCE).
In general, the AMLO administration will inherit from Sheinbaum a series of unfinished or to-be-initiated negotiations of Mexico's bilateral trade agreements with South Korea, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina and the United Kingdom.
The emphasis will be on the T-MEC, which must be updated in 2026. Which seems logical, since almost 82% of Mexican exports go to its neighbors in the United States and Canada.
“The elections in the US, in addition, are very decisive for Mexican foreign policy, let us remember that there are more than 30 million Mexicans in that country and that remittances and permanent flows [that arrive in Mexico thanks to that]”, warns Dorotea Giral.
They will therefore have to wait for the closing of the negotiations corresponding to the accession of Canada, New Zealand and Australia to the so-called Pacific Alliance, of which Chile, Peru and Colombia are also part.
In part, also due to the confrontation that resulted from the failed coup d'état in Peru and the subsequent behavior of AMLO with whoever assumed the Peruvian presidency, Dina Boluarte.
“López Obrador had a frankly deplorable attitude towards Peru, not only because of the style of (…) teaching your political rival through the media, but also because what he said was not true: he said that there was a coup of State against Castillo when he tried to carry out a coup of which neither AMLO nor Petro never mentioned; was Castillo," Kahhat recalls.
The academic's complaint is that there is a democratic clause in the Pacific Alliance that could be resorted to. “But instead of invoking it to judge Boluarte's conduct in the government, he invented a coup against Castillo, ignoring the coup that Castillo attempted. (…) In that sense, the problem with AMLO had to do with his political, populist and confrontational style, and given that Sheinbaum is, at least in part, different, I would expect the relationship to improve,” emphasizes Kahhat.
The academic of Mexican origin, López Giral, considers the same.
“The relationship with Peru has been complicated, and clearly the PA is not a priority for Mexico and it does not exceed political priorities to give way to economic ones, as was once thought for the Alliance,” he details. “I think that the AP will not be a priority, because the country has a series of more relevant challenges, we also have to see how the renegotiation of the T-MEC and nearshoring , as well as Chinese-North American relations, will evolve.”
Even so, for the director of the IEI, Mexico should permanently continue making efforts that allow it to diversify from the United States. “Independence in both products and destinations is essential for the long-term development of a country,” he says.
With the premise of these factors against us, Kahhat also considers that Sheinbaum's government may not be as successful as AMLO's has been so far.
“She does not have the popular support that AMLO had and she does not have AMLO's personality. I would think that she is not going to be successful where López Obrador was not. And vice versa, I would expect that Sheinbaum either does not try or does not succeed where AMLO himself failed,” concludes the Peruvian academic.
