The North America Summit on January 9-11, 2023 may be remembered as the moment when Mexico, Canada and the United States – presenting themselves as the “three friends” – closed in the face of the Chinese challenge and deepened integration its geopolitical zone, according to the experts consulted by DW.
“It’s a kind of New Deal that breaks standards,” says Ignacio Martínez Cortés, coordinator of the Laboratory for Analysis of Trade, Economics and Business (LACEN) at the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). For Lila Abed, associate director of the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute, the summit marks a “return to regionalism” and opens up new opportunities for Mexico.
An outline of a new world order
“The President of the United States, Joe Biden, spoke of supply chains – business people call it nearshoring –; the Mexican President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, spoke of import substitution,” says Martínez. In practice, however, it all means the same thing: “Mexico will play a strategic role in ensuring that the production processes in the region are not interrupted in the future,” writes journalist Raymundo Riva Palacio in the specialist newspaper The Financial.
Beyond the reorganization of world trade, this also means a geopolitical offensive against China. “The United States wants to return to the cradle of technological development and is aiming for a new phase of growth that combines sustainable development and security,” observes China expert Martínez. And the main instrument will be the TMEC, the free trade agreement that has united Mexico, the US and Canada since 1994.
Increasing competitiveness and clean energy
But what’s new about this summit? Perhaps not so much the details, but for the first time security, economy, environment and migration were addressed together. That’s why the meeting was a big boost for the general competitiveness of the region, emphasizes Abed. And it highlights various agreements such as “boosting investment in the semiconductor industry to reduce dependence on Asia and mapping lithium and critical minerals essential to the energy transition.”
For his part, Riva Palacio points to “a series of ambitious, rapid and coordinated actions to build clean-energy-driven economies that are responsive to climate change”. And it mentions that these include “reducing methane emissions by at least 15 percent by 2030 compared to 2020 levels.”
Cyber security and espionage
A new topic was cyber security, for which a special dialogue group was set up. “Although it is not explicitly stated, this means Mexico’s approach to the five-eye system,” says Martínez, referring to the intelligence and espionage alliance FVEY, which so far includes Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Great Britain and the USA.
Mexico, the target of several cyberattacks like that of the Guacamaya group against the armed forces last year, put aside its reluctance, probably “to stem the technological avalanche that China is preparing from 2025,” says this UNAM China expert.
Order migration and train workers
There has also been progress toward orderly migration to promote competitiveness at a time when Canada and the United States face the twin challenges of a flood of migrants and a simultaneous shortage of skilled workers.
Recently, Biden announced a drastic change that will force migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti to apply from their countries of origin if they don’t want to be deported as soon as they set foot on American soil. This has helped significantly reduce the flow of migrants, the Mexican president said. Mexico will support this strategy by building a large migration center in the south to facilitate documented migration and curb human trafficking.
At the same time, a new student mobility project was launched to train the leaders and technicians of the 21st century. That opens up opportunities for young Mexicans. However, it leaves out the rest of Latin America, which López Obrador called for during the Biden summit and spoke of “surrender”. But beyond his rhetoric, his partners’ vision of turning North America into a bastion against global competition from China won out.
(RML)