{"id":50010612,"date":"2018-02-21T12:54:12","date_gmt":"2018-02-21T12:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stage.dialogochino.net\/?p=10612"},"modified":"2024-06-05T11:47:06","modified_gmt":"2024-06-05T10:47:06","slug":"10612-mexico-looks-to-new-horizons-as-nafta-talks-falter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/business\/10612-mexico-looks-to-new-horizons-as-nafta-talks-falter\/","title":{"rendered":"Mexico looks to new horizons as NAFTA talks falter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Smack in the middle of the last Mexico-hosted round of talks to revive faltering trade pact the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), President Enrique Pe\u00f1a Nieto flew to Xiamen, southern China, as it staged the 9th <\/sup>summit<\/a> of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) nations.<\/p>\n

Pe\u00f1a Nieto quit the country amid complaints by President Donald Trump that the 24-year old trade bloc that also includes Canada had disadvantaged US workers and created a trade deficit with Mexico.<\/p>\n

Analysts interpreted<\/a> Pe\u00f1a Nieto\u2019s trip to participate in an emerging economies forum at the Summit, as a pivot away from its noisy<\/a> northern neighbor.<\/p>\n

And relations with China are rosy, according to Qiu Xiaoqi, the Chinese ambassador to Mexico.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey [Pe\u00f1a Nieto and Chinese President Xi Jinping] have reached a consensus on the development of a pragmatic cooperation between our two countries,\u201d Qiu told<\/a> Mexican newspaper Excelsior recently.<\/p>\n

Qiu\u2019s counterpart, Jos\u00e9 Luis Bernal Rodr\u00edguez, said the relationship was enjoying its \u201cbest moment in history\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mutual appreciation aside, and with much attention on NAFTA as negotiators make few advances ahead of talks\u2019 final round in Mexico starting February 25<\/a>, the country would do well to address long-standing social and environmental problems in its bilateral relations with China, experts say.<\/p>\n

Friend or foe?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is no problem with the formal aspects of the Mexico-China relationship, according to Enrique Dussel Peters, director of the Centre for China-Mexico Studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). However, he does not regard China as a panacea should the US ditch NAFTA.<\/p>\n

\u201cChina will not solve Mexico\u00b4s problem with the Trump administration,\u201d he says. Around 80% of Mexico\u2019s exports go to the US, whereas China accounts for little over 1%. Furthermore, exports to China have declined in absolute terms in the past 5 years.<\/p>\n

Unlike many countries in Latin America with large primary sectors, two thirds of Mexico\u2019s exports are manufactures. Mexico does not have the same potential to export agricultural and extractive industry products as Brazil, Argentina and Chile, that benefitted economically from increasing exports during China\u2019s \u2018boom<\/a>\u2019 years, Dussel Peters says. The period was also associated with increasing environmental degradation<\/a> for big commodity exporting countries.<\/p>\n

Dussel Peters adds that despite the positive rhetoric, neither China nor Mexico has managed to tackle the main issues that have generated \u201cmassive tensions\u201d in the last decade.<\/p>\n

These include trade, foreign direct investment<\/a> (FDI), infrastructure projects, tourism and visas. Infrastructure and construction projects have strained China and Mexico relations as much for irregularities<\/a> in tendering processes as their social and environmental impacts.<\/p>\n

An infamous case is the 40% Chinese-owned Dragon Mart<\/a> retail complex. Construction of this joint China-Mexico venture threatened fragile wetland ecosystems on the Puerto Morelos Reef National Park outside Canc\u00fan on Mexico\u2019s Yucat\u00e1n Peninsula, campaigners said. The project was eventually abandoned<\/a> after a legal challenge.<\/p>\n

Lost jobs through trade with China is also an urgent problem for Mexico. According to research<\/a> by Dussel Peters and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Mexico lost over half a million jobs between 1995 and 2011 through trade with China \u2013 the worst hit in this regard of any Latin American country. Brazil was the biggest winner, with 1.35 million jobs created in the same period.