Too Late for Bush to Help Fox?
www.washingtonpost.com Special to washingtonpost.com Thursday, January 23, 2003; 5:09 PM
Like the brilliance of fireworks, U.S.-Mexican relations at the start of the Bush-Fox era flared with promise and hopeful rhetoric. Two years later, all that is left is a mere fizzle.
Jorge Castañeda, the Mexican foreign minister and soul of that brief Pyrotechnic Age, has stepped down. His replacement, economist Luis Ernesto Derbez, made his first visit to the United States this week. By the time he left, it was clear that, certainly in terms of style, things have changed. More substantive revisions seem to be on the horizon, too.
Mexican President Vicente Fox has put in place a new team with the potential to fundamentally change the way Mexico works with Washington. With a host of issues to discuss and enormous potential for mutual assistance, the shuffle seems to open the way for a more down-to-earth relationship. But the stakes are high.
It is understood that internal forces, not external ones, spawned the most recent changes in Fox's Cabinet. Derbez and Fernando Canales, who replaced Derbez as economy secretary, belong to Fox's own National Action Party, the PAN. Castañeda was a leftist loner, a member of no party.
By giving the posts to a pair of the faithful, Fox moved to reconcile his presidency with his party, which had been feeling ignored. That gesture is particularly important in light of legislative elections scheduled for July in which PAN hopes to win more seats in Congress and break the legislative logjam on Fox's reforms.
Their future rides on these elections. Washington has a critical role to play, albeit a delicate and potentially harmful one. With the right moves, President Bush could help revitalize the momentum for democratic reform ignited by Fox's election more than three years ago. But a miscalculation could be el golpe de gracia-the kiss of death-that would condemn Fox to a historical footnote, little more than a six-year interruption in the decades-long reign of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
Fox and the PAN need results somewhere soon.
Immigration is still at the top of Fox's priorities. But expectations have reached a point where his opponents will portray anything short of full amnesty for millions of Mexicans illegally in the United States as a failure.
Some U.S. Republican sources say a plan that would offer temporary work visas is more achievable than amnesty. Democrats here would oppose this as too limited. Fox would need to decide if something is better than nothing, and fight the good fight at home to make it a political gain.
Trade is also at play. Under provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement, nearly all tariffs on agricultural products were eliminated at the beginning of this year, throwing Mexican farmers into direct competition with their heavily subsidized U.S. counterparts. It is an unfair competition, the campesinos contend, without more help from their government.
In the meantime, the two sides are negotiating an exemption for the Mexican poultry industry, most hard-hit by the changes. That would be a win for Fox, but the talks have been stalled by Washington's apparent reluctance to risk setting a worrisome precedent.
Fox needs real progress on the economic front to silence some of his most outspoken critics. With unemployment rising and foreign direct investment falling, Fox's choice of a former World Bank economist to succeed a leftist intellectual as foreign minister was no accident.
U.S. and Mexican officials have been working on a little-known initiative to bring investment to regions in Mexico least benefited by NAFTA and that fuel migration to the United States. The so-called "Partnership for Prosperity" could use the undivided attention of a high-powered Bush official to get the kind of private interest it would require and to demonstrate Fox's sway in Washington.
There is no doubt that Bush also stands to win from helping his friend. Fox's government is becoming an ever more enthusiastic partner in Washington's efforts to strengthen security in the region. Fox's popularity among Hispanics in the United States also adds to Bush's appeal for his reelection bid next year. And perhaps more critically, Fox's attempts to reform the corrupt and inefficient Mexican oil industry, the third-largest U.S. supplier, have gained new urgency here as war in the Persian Gulf looms and Venezuela, the No. 5 U.S. supplier, wrestles with a profound political crisis.
The flash and boom may have gone out of the bilateral relationship. But this time, Mexico needs the steady burn of real progress with Washington.