 Okay, we're back with a special Global Connections here on a given Tuesday afternoon and we have Carlos Suarez hooked up by remote. We are so happy to have him because there are questions we'd like to ask him. Hi Carlos. Hello Jay and good to see we, well good to connect here. I'm joining you from Puebla, Mexico and you know, we live in interesting times. Of course, Mexico in the news these last few days with the negotiations and if you can call it that or basically the announcement of a new deal with Mexico addressing, you know, the migrant crisis but also combining, you know, tough talk on trade, right, tariff, weaponization of tariffs, some have called it. Yeah, indeed. That's where you get to shoot yourself in the foot and wind up having your own people pay what amounts to a tax and in the process you would destroy existing, you know, affirmative relations with every country around, including countries that have been our close allies for years. And the thing about Mexico is that Mexico, like Canada, they're our border neighbors, they're very important to us. I was thinking on the way in, gee whiz, you know, back in the day when, you know, the Russians got involved in Cuba, that was a great threat and it's a great threat now that the Russians and the Chinese are involved in Venezuela. But can you imagine just as a possibility that the Russians got involved in Mexico, Mexico became disaffected, you know, from the United States and welcomed Russians and Chinese who set up bases, that would be the biggest threat to American security you could possibly imagine. So you guys are our buddies. Mexico is an important ally, an important neighbor, you know, always, forever and integrated into our whole country. You know, the Mexican culture is a big part of the American culture. Why are we making you a scapegoat? Why are we pushing Mexico around like this? Do you have an answer for me? Well, let me clarify it. It's not we, it's Donald Trump, because, you know, Mexico and the U.S. have a very long-standing, complex relationship. I would turn to some interesting, I was rereading an interesting interview some time ago of the famed chef now who's now left us, Anthony Bourdain, in which he talks about Mexico, a country that is so poorly understood in the U.S. but is such an important player. You know, Americans love the food, they love the culture. You know, any restaurant in the U.S. is, you know, very sickly depending on whether it's a chef or, you know, the service cooks or whatever. But more than that, I mean, I think that it's a complex relationship and interdependence, of course, but since Donald Trump came strolling down that escalator almost four years ago now, obviously Mexico has taken a pretty tough beating and it is Donald Trump and maybe his, you know, reality TV show that has painted Mexico as this, you know, this place of, well, I mean, there's no question there are challenges here and insecurity and violence and drug wars and all of that, but, you know, the way in which Trump has portrayed it has really, really been, I think it has damaged the relations and let's hope it's not something that will be irreversible, but I think there are a lot of vested interests. I mean, obviously, even the business community, in light of this recent sort of tariff war has pushed back very strongly, even many Republicans saying that's not the way you do it. However, I mean, they've now announced a so-called deal. We don't have a lot of detail about it. It remains murky, but clearly his new use of these sort of tariffs to threaten and push Mexico has forced them to bend and, you know, some would even say appease this president. So, well, it's a tough, complex set of issues. Let's try to unravel some of them and I'm looking forward to offering some perspectives maybe from Mexico that aren't always at the forefront of the U.S. media because it's, you know, it's widely talked about here. This is obviously headline news here as we speak. Well, you know, I just wonder how people feel. I mean, in January 2017, our relationship with Mexico, at least to my knowledge, was pretty robust. And I think you there at the time, you living in Puebla at the time, you can say how it was, not people felt about the U.S. And how about the Mexican government felt about the U.S.? Can you track for us how that has changed the kinds of things that have happened vis-a-vis the relationship, the diplomatic and people-to-people relationship with the U.S. and Mexico since January 2017? Well, and you're speaking there of the inauguration of Trump. I would, you know, go back to the summer before when he announced his candidacy. That was the beginning of a pretty, you know, ugly, you know, set of words that Mexico, you know, only sends rapists and drug lords and whatever, maybe some of their best, but not really. But then, of course, the election occurs. And that was seen with, like, everywhere else. Conservable dismay here because of the uncertainty it brought. So he's elected and gets inaugurated in January. And, you know, relations have been pretty tough. But traditionally, any new president in Mexico or in the U.S., one of their first foreign visits is usually to meet with their counterpart. They go to Ottawa for a quick lunch, or they meet at the border, or maybe the Mexican president might visit the U.S. That has not happened. They have never met to this date. Moreover, I would even remind you, given the, you know, the many vacancies in the U.S. government, to this date, we still do not have a U.S. ambassador in Mexico, one of the most important trading partners and, you know, and allies. And there is an acting, you know, charge rate affairs, but no approved by ambassador. But that aside, I mean, the relationship has been interesting to see because it came at a time when Mexico itself is also transitioned to a new president. And about a year ago in July, they elected a new populist from the left, a leftist leader, the first to come to Mexico in quite a long time. He was inaugurated now in December. So he's been in office about six months. He has not had any real, you know, interaction with Trump whatsoever. And his main focus has been domestic, domestic agenda. And as much as he's tried to avoid Trump, in fact, he's had a pretty good strategy just to not pay much attention and sort of look the other way. But now this most recent crisis has forced him to have to negotiate and send his team, his foreign minister and the ambassador there in Mexico, I'm sorry, in Washington, had to negotiate. While Trump was in Europe, they had to go to the White House and meet with Pompeo and, you know, other top officials. But interestingly, given the uncertainty of U.S. foreign policy, you know, Trump is sending out tweets. And, you know, he's got his VP and his other cabinet officials and acting Homeland Security secretary having to try to negotiate when they don't even know what the position is or what it, you know, what the president wants. So very interesting, you know, we now have the announcement just in the last few days of a new deal that's been made, but a lot of confusion because, you know, what do we have? What is the deal other than Mexico having a commitment to beef up and take on the question of Central American migrants more, we're still just teasing out some of the puzzles. A lot of back and forth, perhaps you've seen in the media that, you know, Trump denounced the deal and many others in the media saying, well, the agreements that were, you know, set to have been made had already been made months back. And so what is new about this deal, but more than that, then I'd like to unravel in our conversation some of the aspects, particularly from Mexico's side that are going to be challenging because both the U.S. and Mexico will face logistical hurdles to try to, you know, carry out some of these promises. And of course, one of them is Mexico has apparently agreed to deploy a newly formed National Guard, which as I'll suggest right now, it doesn't even exist yet, but the idea is that this new National Guard is going to be sent to intercept and possibly deport migrants who cross the southern border with Guatemala. And Mexico doesn't have this force yet trained and ready to deal with the asylum seekers, et cetera. So it's going to be interesting among other things to see how that plays out. That's one aspect beyond that, you know, Mexico's own capacity to absorb what are quite frankly, large growing number of migrants is becoming quite an issue, both at the border and as well, both the southern border and, you know, in the border cities there as they wait to try to get processed into the U.S. So major capacity issues for Mexico. Let me add one last thing and that is that, you know, for Mexico, of course, a top priority is a commitment to address development assistance and aid in Central America, what is seen as the source of the problem. In other words, if they're fleeing violence and underdevelopment of poverty, the solution has to be helping those countries get out of that. The U.S. has not seen that as a top priority and even if you recall a few months ago, President Trump announcing he was going to cut off all aid to Central America if they didn't behave or do something, if anything, that would probably make the situation worse. It's not clear what he wants, you know, but he wants to make it somebody else's problem, not his problem. He doesn't want to take any responsibility. It goes back to, you know, the whole thing about the wall. We'll have Mexico pay for the wall, really? Billions and billions? And was there any commitment for that? Was there even any discussion about that? No, we'll have Mexico pay for the wall. The other sort of cultural strain in Trump's administration is we make agreements except nobody knows what they are. Secret agreements, if you will. That's my favorite part. It reminds me of all these elements of secrecy around his agreement with Kim Jong-un, the first time, which actually wasn't an agreement. And then we have another meeting, a Nothing Burger meeting in Singapore, and that was not an agreement. So we don't have an agreement. You know, this is all charade, it seems like to me. And then, you know, when the New York Times called him on the fact that these principal points, as you mentioned, were agreed before and the Mexico would undertake those things, then he says, well, no, it's not that. What a lie, it's not that, he says. It's a secret agreement. But then they asked him, what are the terms of the secret agreement? Can presidents make secret agreements and keep them from the public? What kind of, you know, what kind of, what kind of really old-time nonsense is that? Demagoguery. So have you heard anything about a secret agreement, Carlos? Well, you know, today in the White House lawn, he was pressed by a group of reporters and he whips out a little piece of paper from his pocket and waves it, a folded paper saying, here's the secret agreement. Now, apparently what the agreement is that, basically they're gonna meet in 45 days and if Mexico hasn't done enough, they're gonna be requested to do more, like the next level. But as best we can tell, and here, again, mixed signals. The Mexican government comes back and is saying some different things. Among other things, Trump, for example, made some reference in his tweets that Mexico had agreed to buy more agricultural products. Here, the foreign minister's saying, no, agriculture was not on the agenda of our guys' discussion. And so a lot of inconsistencies. And I think what it boils down to, and we've seen it whether you, like you said, on North Korea, on, you know, whether it's with China or other issues, what we might describe as Trump's policy is first, create a crisis. Number two, the media responds and goes berserk. Number three, try to solve it and then take credit for having solved the problem that you created to begin with. So this issue with Mexico, again, it's, you know, he's using it in many different ways, putting all his babies together. Migration or immigration is one of his hot issues. Of course, trade, you know, the US being ripped off, you know, NAFTA, the worst deal on the planet. He negotiates a NAFTA 2.0, which, you know, has some valuable, it hasn't been a ratified yet, but it has some important upgrades and changes. But it is simply a, you know, a new version of NAFTA if it gets through. And of course, this most recent crisis suggests that even in the US Congress, it's gotten more difficult. I think there's a real risk that if Mexico continues to be bullied, here there will be real pressure to say, why should we sign a change? Because frankly, no change means that the current NAFTA that we've had for 25 years continues. You can't just overnight eliminate that. That involves a whole nother process. So like he has said, he's gonna somehow trash or eliminate NAFTA. It's not that easy. I mean, yes, he can impose tariffs on pain and suffering. But this other deal that was negotiated last year, again, in a very similar heightened tension, hasn't been ratified because the Mexican Congress here is new. They haven't taken it up. The Senate there in the US has not taken it up. The Canadian Parliament has not taken it up. So his so-called deal-making, there's a lot that remains to be seen. Well, so it's all grandstanding. And you know, the newspapers, the responsible ones have pointed this out that he, as you said, he creates the crisis. He solves the crisis. He calls himself a winner. This happens over and over again. You know, the MO is so clear. And I wonder if anybody buys it anymore. I mean, what the press has been saying, the press I read anyway, in the last few days is we know the story. We know what he does. The narrative is always the same. And it's always a crock. So don't we realize that? Why do we buy it again and again? Somebody's got to call his bluff on this. And maybe the people who have to call his bluff on this are the other countries that, you know, that he is lambasting this way. And you know, as easy as that might be to say, the reality for a country like Mexico, it is the weaker partner. This is a very asymmetrical relationship. It always has been. The US has, you know, for many, many years in this relationship been the heavy-handed, big bully pushing around its way, not in the same way that Trump is doing now. This is obviously a very, almost a mean-spirited bully. But in general, the US has always gotten Mexico to sort of comply and hold it to certain things because Mexico needs the US more than the US needs Mexico. And Donald Trump understands that. So he sees this terror war as a clear way of squeezing Mexico to make some commitments. And Mexico has had to. The president here has put in an untenable position because there's so much at risk. If the economy goes into a tailspin, he is suddenly unable to address his policy agenda. But it has a real risk also of, I think a lot of pushback of anti-Americanism. I mean, it's always been there and it always is there, especially in Mexico's foreign policy. But even today, I think in dialogues here and in the social media, you see a growing disenchantment. Let's boycott American goods. Let's easier said than done because Mexico is wholly dependent on the US for its exports, for its import. However, you mentioned earlier places like Russia and China. China is a player here. It is not on the level that it is in South America. You have countries like Peru and Bolivia, even Venezuela where China is becoming the major pop foreign investor, mainly countries that have minerals and natural resources. But in Mexico, it is here, but it doesn't have the same dependence partly because the US is so much more significant, obviously through NAFTA. NAFTA has deepened that integration of the three economies, Mexico with Canada into the US. But I can assure you there is a growing sentiment that Mexico needs to try to move away from this heavy, heavy dependence. Again, easier said than done because the system is set up to perpetuate and continue this high interdependence. Well, you have, you have. We were all led to believe a few weeks ago that Trump had a deal. This is before any discussion of the five to 25% tariffs that Trump had a deal. He came out, he said, I've succeeded. Yet again, I've succeeded. We have a deal with Mexico. We worked it out. And then all of a sudden, we didn't have a deal. And now, then all of a sudden, he's doing the five to 25% tariffs and he's claiming that Mexico is not doing its job. And now we need to make another deal. That surprised me because I felt that we already had a deal. He negotiated a deal. And what I get from this president is that when he tells you he has a deal, you can't believe him. There is no deal. And he uses this discussion of the deal, this lie about a deal as a technique for getting on the headlines yet again. So am I right about this, Carlos? It seemed to me that what he was saying and what Mexico might have been celebrating even without knowing what the deal was was like three or four weeks ago, there was a deal. And all of a sudden, there wasn't a deal. It's double think. What I get also is that in these tariff situations, he wants to go back to NAFTA without even knowing what NAFTA said. And the same thing in the Trans-Pacific Agreement, he wants to do these multirather, he wants to do these bilateral negotiations instead of multi-tariff. He doesn't understand what the multi was or is. He just pulls out of it because at some fundamental visceral level, he thinks he's gonna do better at bullying one country at a time. Am I right? What's your thought about that? Well, absolutely. I mean, he in now two and a half years into the presidency, he has had a clear disdain for any multilateralism and for basically the system that's been in place now over the last 75 years after World War II, we established in the US basically set up the system of multilateral institutions, cooperation, coordination in the post-Cold War period. That's what it's been characterized by. I suppose, I don't know. I mean, you can read into it. Maybe it's his real estate background where he makes the deals directly and he prefers that one-to-one. The reality of the global economy is that by the US taking itself out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership you mentioned, it has weakened the US position. It has given more strength to China, in particularly in that Asia-Pacific region, et cetera. And you see him when he goes to these multilateral conferences. He's obviously so uncomfortable. He doesn't do well in those kind of settings and has this idea that he can make better deals. Well, we're clearly by now seeing that these so-called deals leave a lot to be said. And with the case of Mexico, I mean, they've been pushed against the wall and this terror threat, a very, you could almost say, an existential threat for Mexico. It had very little choice and very little ability to get anything out of it other than to hope for the best. And so when the announcement was made just a few days ago here, it's like sigh of relief and the government here trying to put its best spin on it. They even arranged this past Saturday after the deal was announced Friday, the president brought a lot of governors and business leaders to Tijuana, have a big rally of their own and somehow to claim that Mexico had saved its dignity and a way of trying to bring out the best spin on it. Now, like Trump here, I mean, the president here is quite popular. I should make that clear, although polarizing in his own way, but he has a very large base. And these are not so interested in the nuance and details of policy, but more they just see him as representing a radical shift from the past, past system. And yet this is a president who does, much like Trump is uncomfortable and multilateral, this new president in Mexico, López Obrador, is not a very globally oriented person. He speaks no English. He has no interest in traveling outside of the country. He sold the presidential plane. He's already announced, he's not gonna go to the G20 meeting, which so many have seen as, this is one of Mexico's forums where they can be a leader of the developing countries, but he is also very uncomfortable, I think in addressing foreign policy issues. And yet this issue made it hard for him to get around and he had to deal and send his team to try and negotiate. But in the end, negotiate with a very powerful, larger player. And in this case, a bully who in the form of Trump has been able to push through some agreements that Mexico is now committed to do. But again, no details, we don't have a publicly released statement. A comment on real estate negotiation you refilled too earlier. And I think that does define him. In his real estate practice, I think probably well known that what he would do is never make the deal. Always do a changeup, always surprise everyone and keep on moving the ball so no one knew where his bargaining position is. So you could never make a deal and people would get very frustrated that the opposite negotiators get very frustrated. They would see him do these bizarre and threatening things and then they would say to themselves, my God, we're locked in with this guy, but he's unable to make a deal, doesn't wanna make a deal. So they get very hungry to make any deal at all and they wind up chasing him in order to make a deal they think. You know, the old rule of practicing law negotiating is you never make two offers in a row because that means you're chasing the other guy's position, can't do that. You have to make a proposition, the other guy makes a counter offer and so forth. But he's one of these guys that never makes a real offer because it's always a fake offer. And doing this on a diplomatic level is very problematic because it leaves the president of Mexico in general in a real pickle. How do they negotiate with that? So I'm getting from what you say that the president of Mexico doesn't wanna go to the G20, which is only in a week or two, right? It's coming up right away. He doesn't wanna go there because he doesn't wanna spend time with this shadow boxing kind of negotiation with Trump. And my question to you Carlos is what should he do? What should Mexico do at this point to secure its own future? Yeah, it's interesting. And let me make clear, his decision, the president of Mexico's decision not to go to G20 doesn't have much to do with Trump. It's his own uneasiness with foreign affairs and his priority to address the domestic here. Now, beyond that, what can Mexico do? I mean, my sense is that they really, I think they should be reaching out to other allies, to Canada, to other Latin Americans, to Europeans try to somehow gain some support for their position. In this crisis over the Central Americans, for example, for the Mexicans, it's all about human rights. It's about the poverty and inequality and that crisis. And so those are issues that for the US are more secondary. For the US, it's all about just stopping the flow and the illegal, well, the asylum seekers, et cetera. But here I think Mexico is also troubled because they don't have a very clearly defined foreign policy agenda. Even the domestic policy, which is his priority, he's got certain areas, but it's also very muddled. The president came to office without having to spell out a lot of details other than to say he's gonna end corruption, he's gonna change the way they do business, and he is, he's a different style. No question about that. But it remains to be seen if he's gonna be successful. Unfortunately, in this relationship with the US, he, you know, I think another advice that he's taken, which I think is also good, is not to pay as much attention to Trump when you don't have to. Of course, when you're being threatened with tariffs, you have to somehow stand up and figure out what to do. But not to get in a shouting match, not to somehow even directly confront him. And so that strategy of somehow keeping it under the radar and ignoring him is really what they've tried to do here. That's tragic because it's not a negotiation of equals that way. And I think largely what Trump is doing is playing a racist game with Mexico, as with other countries. But you mentioned earlier, Mexico's ability to absorb the migrants and people who are seeking shelter and sanctuary from the Central America is a big problem. And actually, the US could do something to solve that problem, what Trump is doing is the reverse. He's doing whatever he can to exacerbate that problem. Anyway, they're coming across your Southern border from Guatemala. They have a lot of trouble getting through Mexico and getting to the US Southern border. And where are they winding up? And does Mexico have the resources and the political will to take care of them? And how does this affect Mexican society when you have this hole in the boat where you really can't solve a problem that keeps on happening? Well, yeah, a couple of quick things. And on one hand, Mexico is, I think, reaching a point of capacity and ability to just deal with this. And I mentioned this newly formed National Guard. It exists on paper. It's basically barely getting put together. In February, the Congress passed a new law and the president came to office with this idea because as you well know, there's been such a rise of violence here for the last 20 years, criminal organizations, the narco cartels, and Mexico about 10, 11, maybe 12 years ago now, 13 years ago, under a previous president, they basically put the military into the drug war. And that basically corrupted the military. Before that, the military was relatively free of corruption. The police has always had that. And so with this notorious corruption and the police and the military, his idea was, well, we're gonna create this new National Guard. Well, what is the National Guard? It's basically former military, former federal police that are giving a new uniform, but they are a new entity, again, still in the works, haven't been trained yet. Although the agreement that was announced says now that they're gonna send 6,000 of these National Guard to the border, really, again, they're just military that have been given a new color uniform. They've had nothing to do with human rights and there's nothing to do with social safety net and taking care of people who are disadvantaged. What is Mexico? What can Mexico do about that? No, well, that's again, part of the idea of this guard is that they're supposed to be trained different, different from police, different from military, to address human rights issues, to address maybe more of the social conditions and so on. But you can't just put on a switch and take a military who's been trained in how to kill and use deadly force and suddenly give them a few crash courses and PowerPoints on how to defend human rights. So it's not gonna be a solution that's gonna happen right away or soon. And there's a quick point I wanted to say is that there's a sense down here that Mexico, once again, is being asked to do the dirty work for Mexico, to be the one that has to close that southern border and basically be the nasty one to deport them all. Mexico has been doing that actually now since about January. I think there've been 11,000 migrants that have come through that have been deported back. And it's a real challenge of Mexico's capacity. And again, when you look at the fear and uncertainty about the economy with the threats of tariff, Mexico's capacity would be even hindered more to be able to do that. And another final point is that by moving these troops or this new force that doesn't even exist towards the southern border, it is taking them away from where they would otherwise be addressing the criminal organizations and networks and drug cartels. So this happened actually some years ago under Obama about four or five years ago, similar pressure to stop the flow of unaccompanied minors that began coming. Well, they did stop that, but it also meant there was a void and a vacuum in other parts where violence suddenly went up. So very challenging issues. I think at one point I take from that is that this has an effect on Mexican society and Mexican politics and the Mexican economy, even though it's just been a war of words so far and a war of, well, Trump making lies, hither and yon. The fact is all of that has a terrifically negative effect. And right now I would say the United States policy toward Mexico is a complete train wreck, a complete train wreck on both sides of the border. I mean, after all that noise about how we needed all these billions of dollars and needed to nationalize the National Guard, you know what he has them doing? He has them painting the fence, painting the fence. You can't get a contractor to do that. He's got the Army painting the fence. They tell me that is emblematic of the train wreck. Well, let me ask you one last question and then we gotta go. And that is what do you see in the future on this? How is this gonna play out? It's not clear that he's gonna be thrown out of office in November next year. But what is gonna happen here? It doesn't paint a good picture right now. And I wonder what your thoughts are looking forward. You're right in the middle of Mexico. You see it all. What do you think is gonna happen, Carlos? You know, I see this so-called deal that again we don't have many details about. It's simply kicking the can down the road again. They're said to be meeting again in 45 days to assess, you know, has Mexico done enough? And well, frankly, what I see happening here and many here in Mexico, particularly the more informed intellectual elites recognizes as it's a way of Trump diverting attention to all the crises he has from the investigations and other domestic politics there. And so this becomes an easy whipping tool to somehow draw attention to this and whip up the base because immigration is a powerful force and the trade issue. And his ability, as much as we may not like it, he can claim whether, you know, the Beatles are right or wrong, that he can claim that he has now pressured Mexico to agree to do certain things, whether they agreed already or whatever. Let me add just finally that here within Mexico, you know, in general, there has been some support for the migrants that are coming through. They understand that Mexico is a transit country and this new government has even opened up in the early days of January, February, offering them work visas, offering them opportunities to stay. But as this crisis continues and gets difficult to manage, there's also a fair amount of discrimination and resentment in parts of Mexico towards the Central Americans. Many of them are stuck on the borders now and, you know, a big city like Tijuana and maybe see the Juarez, they can absorb a fair number as they always have, but it's reaching a boiling point and you're gonna probably, I can predict, you're gonna see probably some violence erupting more in some of these shelters and places that don't have a capacity. The Mexican government doesn't have a capacity. So today we have mostly religious groups and NGOs that are servicing this large migrant population. And the solution for the U.S. is they want Mexico to take care of all the dirty problems, to process the asylum seekers here, to hold them basically as a sort of a safe third country, you know, agreement that they're still trying to unravel. It's a mess and it doesn't look like it's gonna be solved anytime soon. I can anticipate we're gonna see this more on the agenda in the weeks and months ahead and it will remain on the political agenda for the U.S. And for this new president here, he would probably, at hope to keep his focus on domestic politics, this issue is gonna continue to challenge him and without any easy solutions. Well, thank you, Carlos. It's a dreadful picture. I hope things improve. And I look forward to talking with you again on Global Connection. So nice to have your input on this issue. Such an important issue. Thank you so much, Carlos. Thank you and Aloha. Aloha. Aloha.