 Okay. This is going to be, I think, an excellent panel. We have three experts who will be approaching the topic from different points of view. We're going to go alphabetically, so we'll begin with Peter Hakem. Perhaps we can just start with the, I think, do this seated and we'll go one, two, three. A chance to then discuss among themselves. And then we'll go into the question and answer period. Thank you. Thank you very much, Peter. I get the most time, right, going first. Absolutely. Let me say that one thing, unequal partners may describe the U.S.-Mexican relationship. They also describe this panel. I have two real Mexico experts and me. So we all know how many books Sid Weintraub has written. The first one I wrote, read of his, and I couldn't help remembering it when I began reading this book, was A Marriage of Convenience. And now it's ended up as unequal partners. There's no reflection on Elizabeth. But the question is, what's the next book, Sid? If it's Marriage of Convenience, Unequal Partners, where does it go next? And another question I would have, Sid, and this is a little bit of an uncoordinated ramble you'll notice. Was this all inevitable, Sid? In other words, I remember your book Marriage of Convenience, your writings on the pre-NAFTA, that were very optimistic. Even post-NAFTA were very optimistic. This book sounds as if it's the most critical I've read. And I just wondered if there's a change in your own thinking about the kind, the quality, the direction of the relationship. Let me just say also, let me not get into the criticism right away, that it is as both Carla and Ambassador Jones suggested. The book is an incredible guide to the policy issues that separate and join both Mexico and the United States. It really goes through the important issues. It lays out in very clear form the issues, arguments, choices, consequences. And I thought that I was once on a debate club, and if I needed a book that would inform me of how to debate either side of the argument on Mexico, Sid, this would provide it. It really is a very extraordinary sort of map through the landscape of issues and problems. I have one small disagreement, Sid, and that is, I'm not sure that I agree with your thesis, that this is a relationship of dependency. And to me, dominance and dependency, dominance means you get your way. And the United States is not getting its way on many issues. Mexico may not be doing it by sort of taking an equal, I think the title unequal partners is right, but I think the way that the relationship evolves more, maybe the word is there a word obstinacy, stubbornness, resistance rather than dependency. I'm not quite sure I would use that word, but maybe, and indeed if there was a better word, it's almost that what comes to mind, and I'm not sure there is a single word, is dysfunctional, almost counterproductive at times. Let me say, if you brought together a panel of experts on these various issues, let's say from anywhere that knew very little about Mexico to start with, they come from Nigeria, Australia, Russia, Mars. I think if you laid out the set of problems that Sid discusses in the book, they would come to pretty similar conclusions about what has to get done. In fact, Sid himself points to the direction. Why is it that the U.S. and Mexico seem to have such a great difficulty in sort of moving along the track toward problem solving? In some ways, it seems to me it's almost the very nature and history of the relationship that prevents effective problem solving, prevents effective mutual cooperation, and one can take any one of the issues and take oil, for example. We all see Mexico is really not making good productive use of its incredible oil resources, and it's even allowing them to sort of decline and it's not replenishing them. And also, not only that, but it's allowing it to really undermine its fiscal management as well. Mexico seems unable to take advantage of what the U.S. could really provide, technology, investment capital, and the reason it doesn't take advantage of it is precisely embedded in the history of the relationship and sort of can we overcome that history and that's what I say dysfunctional, that the history and the process of the relationship almost makes it impossible. One can go on to sort of drugs and violence and I'm going to stop here. Hillary Clinton, Ambassador Jones mentioned her trip which was a great success in Mexico where she talks about the need for co-responsibility, the co-effort by the United States and then she mentions two issues on which the United States can be helpful which is very appealing to the Mexicans. One, we would reduce our consumption of drugs and secondly, we would reduce the smuggling of arms to Mexico. And the fact is that looking at those on its face, knowing what we know about American politics we recognize how impossible it is to move very quickly on either of those issues in this country. And so, you know, what appeals, what made her trip so successful were precisely a speech where she was enunciating objectives that were almost impossible to achieve. And I could go on and on about Mexico's not being willing to take advantage of U.S. law enforcement capabilities and the like and then of course we could move into immigration really wants to take that dysfunctional or to sort of illustrate a dysfunctional relationship but I'm going to leave that up to who's H.O. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Peter. Antonio Ortiz. Well, let me congratulate you. Sit on it. Okay. Thank you, Peter and thank you, Sid, for inviting me. I don't know if my wife should be here. She's a clinical psychologist and she's speaking about dysfunctional relationships, marriages of convenience and things like that but since she's not here I'll make some comments on a personal basis, not in my capacity as an Embassy of Mexico official. And first of all I'd like to congratulate Sidney on the book. Again, I'm astounded by the productivity of Sidney. In my previous incarnation I was the Chair of an Academic Department in Mexico and it was a tourism that once someone got tenure they stopped producing because of your moral hazard issues. I don't know if the cuernabaca air or what makes you keep taking, so if you have any secrets please share them, Sid. Now on the book I would say that it's a very comprehensive book even though it's fairly slim in size, it's readable. It covers a wide array of issue areas that Ambassador Hills has mentioned and I think this is very important to understand Mexico these days. You may need to analytically separate those issue areas but there's no way you can understand trade without understanding investment, without understanding energy, without understanding transnational organized crime border issues. It's a complex relationship and I think that Sidney does a wonderful job of laying out these separate strands and then putting them back together at the end of the book when he makes some proposals. My sense is that the take on point of the book is that change is possible. If I think back when I was in school in the late 70s, early 80s and I read unequal partners, I would think dependency, dependency theory, structuralism. There's no way you can deal with the US except by delinking, decoupling from the US and where I was in base there in the early 70s but my predecessors were and a lot of them refused to study the US. They said, you know, you combat the enemy. You don't study the enemy but luckily we had some political exiles from Argentina, from Chile, from Uruguay that knew what they were talking about and they said no, we're happy to take grants from the Ford Foundation and to understand how the US Congress works and how US makes domestic policy and foreign policy. I think that was very enlightened and it also goes to show that individuals matter and that they can change policies. Now, how did a more sort of proactive stance from Mexico come about in some of the issue areas that Sid mentions, trade, FDI, maybe energy? I would say that in terms of trade it was a crisis led policy change. ISI was not working and we had the debt crisis in the 1980s and when we exhausted a lot of options we decided to join GATT after in 79 we decided we would not join GATT but I think this was a pretty centralized decision by the President and his advisors. Same with FDI, when FDI was highly regulated under the Achevria administration that was a decision made by Achevria and a small group of advisors. When FDI was subsequently opened in the 1980s with La Madrida and later on with Salinas, it was, I mean, nobody asked me or a lot of other Mexicans, it was a decision by an elite group and I believe that things are changing in Mexico but it's still very difficult to get a good degree of accountability from decision makers. I think that in order to have a more functional relationship as opposed to a dysfunctional relationship we need greater accountability both from business leaders and political leaders and I think that until we push through some very important political reforms in Mexico starting with re-election for members of Congress it'll be very difficult to have a more proactive, a more long-term view about how to do the things we need to do to make the most out of the relationship with the U.S. and the fact that we are joined at the hip and it's, you know, I don't think that we want surgery, I don't think that you can have surgery. I mean, we're stuck, we're stuck with each other and I would end with a question for Sidney. What do you think it would take for U.S. leaders to change the dynamic of relationship? I think this is an interesting book written by a U.S. former diplomat, a U.S. academic, looking at things maybe from a Mexican perspective in a way. I think it would be interesting to, I don't know if to have a Mexican or someone, look at this dysfunctional or complex relationship from a U.S. perspective. What would it take for U.S. leaders, both in government and in business and civil society, to change this dominant-dependent relationship or dysfunctional relationship? And I'll leave that to Sid. Thank you. Thanks very much, Antonio. Andrew? Thank you, Peter. You know, first of all, congratulations to Sidney on a very fine book. This is really, it's an easy book to read and I think it's incredibly insightful and incredibly timely. I showed this book to a colleague over at the Wilson Center the other day when it came out and her first comment, she looked over on the other side and noticed that I had a comment on the back of the book and said, shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't it be Sidney Weintraub commenting on something that you have written and not you commenting on Sidney Weintraub? And I feel somewhat both honored but also slightly intimidated to comment on that. Sidney's latest book. So in 3D, the only U.S. written on Mexico for both of us, for both countries, how little scholarship there is and Sidney has really been at the forefront for many years driving this scholarship. In fact, I was doing a literature review the other day on U.S.-Mexico relations and English language literature, I mean, I'm pulling numbers out of the air but probably a quarter-third of the good scholarship on U.S.-Mexico relations must have been written by Sidney Weintraub and that is rather surprising, actually. So it is, once again, we see his latest updating of where things are as things in the relationship have moved and I think it's particularly timely for reasons that I'll get to in a moment. Clearly, asymmetry is a major feature of the relationship. When you ask people who know who follow U.S.-Mexico relations, it's sort of the first thing that comes off the lip. That's not surprising. I mean, probably nowhere in the world is there a developed country and developing country that shares such an intense relationship, such a long border between them. The U.S. is three times the size of Mexico. GDP per capita is roughly six times depending how you calculate it. 18 times difference in ratio in the GDP between the two countries. It's a significant difference. It's not surprising that asymmetry would be a major feature but as Sidney points out in this book, it's not only the fact that asymmetry exists, which is not surprising, but the way it's internalized and the way that it shapes policymaking. You can do lots of things with asymmetry. So the question is how do we on each side of the border deal with this? And I think Antonio is right to a large extent. This book is almost going to be more useful to people on the Mexican side than on the U.S. side. To some extent, it is a book about how Mexico can change the dynamic, but that's probably not surprising in any asymmetrical relationship. The one on the weaker side of the relationship often is the one in the position to change terms. One that has the incentive to change things. And I think as he shows in this book, has historically been the one that has changed what asymmetry means. A little bit of history, and this is borrowing from our mutual friend Peter Smith. The U.S., to a large extent, has conditioned the relationship with Mexico through history, through its general foreign policy. I mean, originally looking at the acquiring of territory, then moving into questions of investment and spheres of economic control, early part of the 20th century, and then post-war, post-World War II, the Cold War really conditioned U.S. policy towards Mexico. Ambassador Jones referred to that as well. I mean, we largely saw Mexico through the lens of stability, through keeping it out of the orbit of the communist bloc. Sergio Aguayo and Jacqueline Mass have written a pair of books, both done here at SICE actually, that looked at how that conditioned U.S. support for a single-party system in Mexico, for example. But largely, our lens was stability. Stability, and you know, Mexico can have an independent foreign policy on Cuba, as long as Mexico is sharing information on Cuba as well. And Mexico, in return, developed a foreign policy that was largely defensive, that largely sought to maintain a degree of autonomy, a degree of independence against a very strong neighbor that had a very specific interest. This changed after the Cold War. And the Cold War, you know, as Peter Smith notes, and Sidney, you know, implies here as well, the post-war period is a period where there is no single framework for U.S. foreign policy, where other issues, often real issues of economic interest, security, you know, drug trafficking, democratization, a few other things, float up, but there is no single framework. And to some extent, it has left U.S. policy towards Latin America being somewhat rudderless. And I think many of us that follow Latin America would say, it's often unclear what the framework where Latin America fits into broader U.S. foreign policy interests. But the inverse has actually happened with Mexico. And the inverse has happened because this is a period that's coincided with an intensification with a growing interdependence between the U.S. and Mexico in very real terms. And this will sound almost like the chapters of the book, actually. I mean, in fact, tracks completely along there. I mean, trade, clearly, Mexico becomes fundamentally important for the United States in terms of trade, in terms of economic development. It becomes incredibly important in terms of migration, where almost one in ten Americans is of Mexican heritage today. Almost one in ten Mexicans lives in the United States, actually more than one in ten Mexicans lives in the United States. Where the border develops, border cities, border communities develop in importance, but also the border is pushed back, gradually, where you can talk about cities like Dallas and Phoenix and Los Angeles or Monterey and Hermosillo and Ensenada becoming border cities. And so what is the area of really intense interaction at the border is much more significant. And we're drug trafficking. The illicit side of the trading relationship between our country becomes significantly important, both as a public health issue, but also in the past couple of years, grabs people's attention because of the level of violence. This is a period in the post-Cold War where we no longer have a single foreign policy framework, but we develop a set of inter-mestic issues and intensity in the relationship that leads to a great interdependence between us. And it is also a period where there's a rise of new actors, a greater complexity in the relationship, where it is no longer just the State Department and the Resonance Exteriores managing the relationship, but you begin to see in the middle of an economic crisis like last year where the Treasury Departments of the two countries are really the lead, where you begin to see on the drug trafficking issue, it is not, yes, the State Department and the Foreign Ministry play a huge role in setting the framework for understanding, but the actual operative work on the ground is the Justice Department, Homeland Security on this side, as well as other agencies on the Mexican side, Gobernación, Seguridad Pública and others, where you see Congress has become increasingly important. And democratization in Mexico is fundamental here as well, obviously, in the same period, where Congress becomes a very important actor. In Mexico, as it becomes in the United States, and they begin to develop their own set of interactions that don't flow through the executive branch, where you see border governors becoming important actors, border legislators, attorney generals, local mayors, and you begin to see people other than outside of government becoming important actors in the relationship of labor and business and others. So we have, at one hand, the loss of a single framework for understanding the relationship, but the growth of a set of interests that are very real that touch on domestic interests in our two countries, and that have a whole set of actors around them and think about these issues in completely different ways. This goes back to Sidney's book, because I think the story he is telling us is that the relationship is deeply asymmetrical. When you look at specific issue areas, it's much less asymmetrical. The relationship as a whole, if you look at it, you know, if you say, is this a very uneven relationship? Is the U.S. a much bigger country, more economically influential, a sort of world superpower? Yeah, if you look at a specific issue like trade, if you look at a specific issue like drug trafficking, if you look at a specific issue like managing a relationship between Tui Huan and San Diego and economic complementarities at the border, it becomes a much more equal relationship. It becomes, and it becomes a relationship in which there are multiple actors who have different views of things and are often building alliances that do not divide easily as simply a U.S. position and a Mexican position. And I think Sidney's captured that very well by looking at the major issues in the relationship. When you actually look at these, the relationship becomes much less asymmetrical in terms of how it plays out. And let me just end with two questions for Sidney. I think there's two areas that he touches on that I think can be explored further. And these are perhaps limitations to where the relationship can become less asymmetrical over time, because we're large extent, I think this is an argument about how, yes, it's asymmetrical, but how it can become less asymmetrical over time, and particularly how Mexico can drive this becoming less asymmetrical. One is to what extent can Mexico reposition itself in the world? Mexico has, some would say, punched under its weight in terms of global politics, has tended to be somewhat hesitant in engaging in international discussions. That is starting to change, perhaps, with climate change and a few other areas. But to what extent can Mexico actually strengthen its position vis-a-vis the United States by having a more active position vis-a-vis other countries in the world as well and other major global issues? And secondly, one that you do touch on and hear, but would love to hear your thoughts on more, is to what extent to change the underlying question of asymmetry? And asymmetry will never go away because different population sizes, different places in the world, world economy, but to what extent could, I mean, the story you're telling about asymmetry, the real way of changing this over time is investing in development in Mexico, in Mexico investing in its own development. And to what extent may this at some point be detonated? I mean, to the extent that it's very hard to reach consensus in a new democracy in Mexico around economic policy, around social policy, to what extent the desire to actually have a stronger role vis-a-vis the United States may actually be something that drives consensus. Much as it has for Brazil, I mean, Brazilians can tear each other apart internally among a number of issues, but when it gets to Brazil's role in the world, Brazilians unite. And that's led to a certain consensus around some bases of economic and social policy. And I'm wondering if that may happen in the case of Mexico as well, particularly seeing, you know, that this presents a consistent weakness vis-a-vis the United States, this may be a driver at some point to try and deal with any symmetry by getting the domestic house in order as well. Thanks, Andrew. Thank you. Thank you very much to our three panelists. All of you have raised questions that are very basic to Sid's book and perhaps it would be useful now for Dr. Weintraub to address some of those questions. We've heard Peter Hakim expressing his sense that the tone of the book is more critical than in the past, less optimistic. Is this a change in thinking? Antonio mentioned or raised the question of what it would take for the United States to really begin to change its positions on Mexico and through questions about to what extent can Mexico reposition itself in the world to strengthen its own position and deal with the question of asymmetry. Other questions as well? Sid, why don't you take them on? I'll be brief on these and then I hope we give the audience a chance. I'll go in order and we disagree with each other so if I answer some of the questions that Peter Hakim gave, other people didn't necessarily agree and I'll point out where there are differences maybe. I think the word dysfunctional is a lousy word. I hate to say that because there's been so much working together that it has not been impossible to change Mexican policy. That's at the heart of the book. When something happened in 1982 when the dead crisis came, they changed on a dime. The policy did change. It changed quite radically and it changed overnight. The U.S. is a lot slower in changing and I'll come back to the decision. Some things, in other words, the idea that it's impossible to change has been disproven by facts. I give some other examples in the book. In the 1994 exchange rate crisis really and then the 1995 depression in Mexico. Overnight, even against their will the Mexicans changed from a fixed rate. It was a spread between the upper and lower bounds of that fixed rate. They changed to a floating rate. In other words, it's not impossible to change. When the circumstances change, Mexico has been more able to change quickly than the United States has been. That impressed me. That's one of the main conclusions I reach. It's a question asked by Antonio and I want to come to that. Why Mexico is more able to change than the United States? I guess it's in part we're a bigger country. We're somewhat more arrogant and somewhat more sure of the fact that we're right about things and I think that probably gets into it very much. Why should we change? We're the strong guy. They're the weaker guy. They should change. It's a lousy policy to follow for the United States, but we do that frequently. He asked how could we change? How could we change on a lot of things? You know, trucking is one example. For example, that was raised by Carla. I think the fact that the U.S. Congress and the President's willingness to sign a bill which cut off the special arrangement on trucking was about one of the most deplorable things I've ever seen and the Congress did it and the President did it because they assume Mexico was so docile they had been for the 10 previous years they wouldn't retaliate. Well, when we gave, when we told Mexico definitively we're never going to change. That's what that legislation was. That's what that signature was. They retaliated. I don't know whether Obama will deal with his labor union. That's why he did it. That's why he didn't try to go back to the agreement originally signed in after. I think he may do it now. Otherwise, the question you asked me, Antonio, was how can we change? And I think it's up to the President of the United States who has not paid much attention to Mexico. He's a little bit like Lyndon Johnson. He's willing to talk about it abstractly but he's not paying much attention. He's not paying much attention to sort of say what's happening. It was useful for Hillary Clinton to blame ourselves a little bit for having such big consumption and creating Mexico's problems. We used to argue, if you look through history, that it was all Mexico's problem. The reason we have drug consumption is they couldn't stop it coming up on the border and we punished them. We closed the border to send them a message. We wanted them to stop. In other words, our tendency was to blame Mexico for our problems, at least that change. But it has to change more than that. It has to change by more than that. I don't think it's easy for the United States to cut back on consumption. That's going to be very hard. But we could have entered into Merida a lot more generously and willingly than being dragged into it. And if you read the congressional debate, you'll see that we would drag into it. In other words, I think it will take the President of the United States to change some of the weaknesses of the way we deal with Mexico. Let me make one other point. In many respects, what I'm trying to describe in the book is not necessarily unique to just Mexico and the United States. I make the point earlier, you can look at some of the history of other neighbors where there was a deep conflict, dominance dependency, which is the phrase I used. And I think the word dependency is the right one. I don't want to go into why the whole book tries to explain that, so I suggest you read it. Poland and Germany were that way for a long time. And it took Germany to make a change. Realized that the relationship they had built up over the years was no longer feasible in the modern world. Japan and Korea were like that until World War II and Korea got its independence. Those relationships have changed, not fully, but largely, and what I'm getting at is the US-Mexico relationship. It's changing. The final question I want to deal with, two points that Andrew Saley made about how can Mexico reposition itself. He used the word asymmetry all the way through. I deliberately wanted to get away from that word. It's self-evident. There's no sense writing a book that the United States is richer, more powerful than Mexico. We know all of that in the self-evident. The point I was getting at was not asymmetry. Why write a book about something that's self-evident? It was really that dependency dominance relationship. Asymmetry exists between the United States and just about every other country in the world. But they're not all the same. We don't treat European countries that are weaker than us in the same way that we treat Mexico or have treated Mexico in the past. It's a neighbor and it makes a difference. And asymmetry is the word I deliberately said exists, but it's too evident to really discuss, except in a paragraph the way you did. And I think Mexico can strengthen itself by behaving more equally on issues. It took a long time for, as I try to point out in the book, on issue after issue, Mexico wouldn't even deal with many of the issues. Mexico wouldn't even deal with trade with the United States before 1982. They didn't want to. And I give some examples in the footnote that when I was asked in the State Department to be the director of the U.S. part dealing with Mexico, all the Mexicans wanted to do at that point was to make speeches. Why, as a more dependent, less developed country, we had to give them free preferences without any reciprocity. And I point out, at that time, my reaction was, well, if you want everything for nothing, why do we have to meet? We could just do it. And we did for many, many years. What they could do is, I think, they can make themselves heard more in the world in a way like Brazil does. They started to do that in Iraq. After all, they voted against the United States. They happened to be on the Security Council at the time. That was a very powerful example of how Mexico stopped acting as a dependent country. They said, no, you're wrong. We're not going to vote with you. They can show their interests and many other issues that come up frequently. They did, they were able to change their relationship. I mean, what can the United States do? It was a question I said the President did in a way President George Bush, H.W. Bush, the father, when he agreed to negotiate after. That was an effort to make a change. It was a rather big effort to make a change. I thought after when it was signed it was the most important agreement the United States had signed with Mexico since the treaty in which Mexico had a hand over a good part of its territory in the United States. I think President Bush saw it that way, too. I think he saw the political importance of that. Finally, how can they make themselves more powerful in the world? They join the GATT and they speak up in the GATT. That's one of the World Trade Organization. But they were beginning now to talk up in other areas. In some they don't. I think the initiative for more cooperation on narcotics came from Mexico. It came from Mexico. The Ambassador here worked on it. It didn't happen by accident. It was a deliberate campaign by Mexico to get more cooperation from the United States rather than for the United States to preach and do zilch. Indeed, the Ambassador put it that way and that's what we were doing. In other words, I think it's happening and that again is part of the book. It's harder to do in some areas than in others. It's harder to do it on migration because really, Mexico has no right to negotiate with the United States on Mexico. They would like to. But each country determines its own immigration policy and they try to get at that but they've been less insistent in recent years on that point than Vicente Fox was, for example, when he made it to the biggest issue in the relationship. Some issues are very hard to deal with but I think they can speak up in a positive way, in a constructive way and my guess is they're doing it in most areas and they ought to do it more. Politely, diplomatically, not in a nasty way, behave in a way sometimes much more properly than we behave at times but it can be done and I'll take any questions anybody in the audience wants. Thanks. If you'd like to ask a question, please state your name and your affiliation. We'll have a microphone gentleman here. Norman. Norman Bailey, Institute of World Politics. First of all, my congratulations to Sidney on his most recent book and I can comment freely on it since I haven't read it yet. In any case, my question is for anybody or everybody on the panel and also for Sidney. Thank you. Can anybody explain to me something I find really mysterious and that is since our relationship with Columbia is actually considerably less important than our relationship with Mexico. Why is it that we have through Democratic and Republican administrations been able to have a very productive relationship under Plan Colombia with Columbia which has been quite remarkably successful for years and we simply cannot do the same kind of thing for Mexico. The Merida Initiative and Sid commented on it very briefly. Frankly, has been an enormous disappointment to just about everybody and I don't understand the reason that the one can be done and the other can't be done. Well, I'll answer first and then let the others do. We deal with Columbia in a positive way on certain things. Narcotics. And indeed in part because there was a, I think part of the motivation is that there was a guerrilla movement in Columbia that made a difference to us. It was getting engaged really in narcotics trade, the FARC. That's part of it and we didn't know where that would eventually go. Mexico has some oppositional groups but there's not any group, any guerrilla group in Mexico that's as powerful as the FARC was when policy began to change. If there were, I think we would have acted more quickly. But at the same time, you explained to me, I can't understand why a country as friendly as Columbia which has free trade, ventry of its goods into the United States anyhow, can't get the President to make a big fight really for a free trade agreement. That's the one that puzzles the hell out of me. The Mexican ambassador here stated in the speech that I heard one day, if that's the way you treat your friends, why the devil be your friend? But many of them, I don't know if I answered the question but I'll leave it to others. Anyone else want to? Let me just, I think, what Columbia was facing was really an existential threat. I mean, the government was in very serious guerrilla groups were occupying large parts of the country's security. And the two examples said used to show that the relationship couldn't be described as dysfunctional. In the case of Mexico, where they did turn very quickly on a dime, as it said, were also very close to existential when Jesus Silver, it's all called and said, we can't pay our international debt in 1982 or in 1994-95 when the peso collapsed and the economy almost collapsed. That's when, yeah, and countries find it a lot easier to find common ground when there is real serious deep existential threats. And I think that much of these other issues are not quite that. Sid has just said very well that Mexico is nowhere near as threatened as Columbia was for so many years. Just to add, I mean, it's natural in any issue. This is the issue of the day right now for a lot of reasons, but I think it's gonna be true of any issue that we deal with in the future. I mean, Mexico is also in a position to bargain in a different way. I mean, this is a country where we have a deep interdependence and vice versa. We have, as Siddy points out in the book, I mean, there is nonetheless sort of this history of misunderstanding. We're beginning to recognize the degree of interdependence we have, the fact that both countries can push back against the other very effectively on specific issues. It breaks down the relationship when we push back on each other. We push back on one part. We can still work together on another part. But it's gonna take us a while, I think. When I say a while, we're probably talking decades before we have the kind of understandings that allow us to work much more fluidly on the incredible complexity that we have in the relationship. My name is Ahmed Meir, retired from the Foreign Service. I was in Mexico during the NAFTA negotiations both under Ambassador Jones and Ambassador Negroponte. And I don't think we've ever worked harder the United States policy to support Mexico. But I think after that we abandoned. It seems that, obviously, Iraq was one of the reasons, but the whole last decade, it seems that we've only been working with Mexico on problems. Mexico is a rich country. The question is, why is it that we have not been able to maintain our momentum? I agree with what you say. That we did work very hard to get NAFTA passed. Right next to you have the woman who did a lot of the key negotiating for NAFTA. And I think the negotiators did a remarkably good job on both sides. And the agreement was what it was, and it's main points were accomplished on trade and investment. Why we lost interest? Because it was clear to all of us. Indeed, at the time NAFTA was approved, a lot of us said and wrote, and I think they knew that all over in people who follow these relationships, if it became a static agreement, it would lose its force over time. It became a static agreement, essentially. In addition to that, we signed many more free trade agreements for the exclusivity that Mexico and Canada had, Israel to some extent, but that was less significant. Got lost. The growth slowed down. And I suspect what happened was is that the opponents of NAFTA, mainly the labor unions, I don't dislike labor, but the labor unions have been an obstructionist group on that, on trucking, and a good many other things, have never given up their fight to it against NAFTA. And the evidence that gets pointed out by eminent think tanks is that the reason Mexico's growth rates were not very great over the whole period, the last 25 years, some of them blame it on NAFTA or post-NAFTA. They blame it on NAFTA in ways that I don't even understand. My view, my view is a little different. I blame it on Mexico felony to take the structural things that everybody in Mexico who studies the issue know. I'll come back to your question. Peter Hakem made the sort of made the point that the book is very critical of Mexico. I don't think it is. I think it really just essentially put it differently. It agrees with what most economists and most people who study the country from within say about themselves. In a sense, I don't think I introduce anything new in that debate because all Mexican economists have wanted things to change. What I'm talking about is the educational system, the monopolies in Mexico, the labor laws that make it impossible to hire people. Santiago Levy just wrote a whole book on that. I mean, it's quite known why we didn't do it. I don't really know. I don't really know. But you would agree that we want South America? We wanted all of... We wanted to have free trade with all of South America. The Brazilians really were the most responsible for killing that. I, my own view at the time, and I remember writing a note to Mac McClarty, because he had something to do with it, and say, why don't you go ahead without Brazil? Let them go their way. Why don't we go our way? Well, I guess he and others in the government thought Brazil was too important. We shouldn't do that. I think we haven't done it because there's a lot been written in think tanks and others blaming the depression in Mexico on NAFTA and blaming high unemployment in the United States on the trade agreement with Mexico and Canada. And that position, it's not a majority in the United States, but I think NAFTA is a 50-50 proposition in both among Americans as to whether they favor it or oppose it. I think the popularity in Mexico is a little higher than it is here. We have time for two questions, Margaret, and then our final question. We're going to be tight on the questions. Margaret Hayes, I want to go to the pickup on the last words that Sid said and Carlos comment that we are told that this is not a good relationship when, in fact, the numbers show that it is a good relationship for the United States as well as for Mexico. And the question would be what do we now need to do to change the tenor of the discussion about the U.S.-Mexico relationship and NAFTA and turn that into a discussion of the positive sum game that it has been. For example, you mentioned the labor unions have been outspoken, and maybe the think tanks have followed their lead, but the business community also has lost interest. All of the organizations that were extremely active during the run-up to NAFTA hardly any of these breathe a breath anymore. So do we need to kind of relaunch a new NAFTA following on a new start in order to change the discussion of our of the relationship in a way that supports U.S. and Mexican competitiveness and focuses more on the investment and development opportunities that would enhance our global competitiveness? Yes, I think we need to do more. Carla, in a way, gave you some of that in her talk. She mentioned the fact it would be very difficult at this point in time in U.S. and in Mexican history to have a common external tariff, which would make a big difference. She gave one reason for my reasoning is that it would change a lot of the relationship instead of leaving where now 15 years away from when NAFTA was signed, we signed a lot of other agreements. We did nothing to strengthen NAFTA. She suggested that we get rid of a lot of the rules of origin I think we can in many, many ways and suggestions have been giving. Push that further. I think it would make a big difference if the president spoke up a little bit and secondly, I think it would make a big difference if the president our president, Obama with my support didn't cave to his labor supporters on every single issue. He cave to them on the trucking issue and I've asked a lot of my friends in the trade business can you think of any other single case where the United States consciously and deliberately violated an agreement in its side and I've never gotten an answer giving me a good example. We sometimes have but it wasn't deliberate. It was sort of in fits of forgetfulness and if we were called up on it, we changed. On that, we haven't changed. I'm sort of hoping that all of the industries that are losing their market in Mexico eventually have some influence losing the market because of the retaliation. In other words, I think there's no substitute for the president of the United States to indicate that he cares about Mexico and he has not done that. Thank you Arturo Porsekansky with American University. Thank you and I look forward to reading your book. The relationship is indeed unequal and I sympathize with the idea that in order to even it out a bit it's going to be mostly up to Mexico either to pose a greater risk to the United States or to become more of a land of opportunity to the United States and that's what's going to take it to be put on the radar screen and to even the relationship. On the risk side you can just imagine if it were to become true that Mexico the situation deteriorates to the point where it is a threat of becoming a failed state. I'm sure it would get on everybody's radar screen much more than it is now but it's not a failed state despite some rumors to the contrary and that's why we take it quite seriously the whole security situation but that's not enough to overcome other interests. On the opportunity side to be optimistic or unrealistic if they were to open up the energy industry I think that would put them on the map because then you'd have the kind of corporate interests that could take on the union interests in this country and maybe something good would come out of that confrontation but the fact is that the last two presidents in Mexico haven't been able to reform even lesser problems than that one it seems to be mired in a lot of history and emotion and everything. Do you agree with me unless the energy sector is opened up that would be just about one of the few ways where the relationship could become less unequal and that certainly would appreciate any other panelists comment too. I agree with what you're saying I think the way you put it is very good if they started to become a failed state we might give them a little bit more money but I'm not sure what the full reaction of the United States would be of that. I don't know how you deal with narcotics otherwise I think as I point out in the book that we put Mexico in a hopeless position when it comes to narcotics we consume up here and then we deplore all the killings taking place because the various marketing groups down there fight for access to this big profitable market. That's worth I don't know how much to them 20 billion, 30 billion, 40 billion we're not reacting quite the way you say we might react if it started to become a failed state. I don't know what would happen in that case but the fault begins up here and it was useful imagine it took Hillary Clinton until it went this year, last year they even say that officially up till then the fault was all theirs and I never understood that because it was clear to everybody else except officials as to where the fault was on your second point on energy I couldn't agree with you more the polls actually, the reason the president was not able to do anything, there are historical sensitivities, every Mexican child who has been in school since 1938 has learned about how they got a lot of their freedom back by expropriating the oil properties. It's deeply embedded when polls are taken and maybe it ought to get changed so they can enter into joint ventures with other countries the overwhelming majority is against it and that's one of the reasons it doesn't get through Congress. I've tried to think through what scenario and it would be important, it would be critical I've tried to think of a scenario under which that might happen and I've done that by analogy to other scenarios where changes took place the trade and investment scenario changed when there was no option there was really no option it had failed import substitution had run its course it failed and you had a downturn in Mexico that lasted a whole decade they changed their exchange rate when it became clear that failure to devalue had consequences and they reacted to that I've often thought the way I think might change production in Mexico of oil is declining it's been declining for a number of years they're still producing enough to do well but unless they find some new oil and reverse the decline they're even trying now to drill in deep waters not very deep the way Brazil does but deeper than they have let me make an assumption that they don't find new oil then since they skim off about 40% of the federal budget from the gross revenues of Pemex the National Oil Company in order to be able to finance the federal budget if Mexico were unable to export oil because the production had gone down they need other money somewhere in their system to be able to finance the federal budget the only other way I can think of is to raise taxes and then if a choice came between raising taxes enough to finance the federal budget or doing nothing I think the choice between raising taxes and allowing foreign investment joint ventures you don't have to privatize Pemex that it's harder to raise taxes and I think the solution might come if that continues for another few years beyond that I don't see the solution otherwise Mexico takes these steps the ones I mentioned after a crisis and I think it would take a crisis to change this back to panel yes I think that to follow your question that paradoxically the US has taken NAFTA for granted on Mexican businesses as well precisely because of what Ambassador Hill said because it has been very successful it has promoted trade and it has promoted investment and business leaders on both sides just did their own thing they did business but I think that now we need to give it another impetus there are worrying signs on the US side about creeping protectionism with initiatives such as Buy American there's a lot of concern about US non-compliance on trucking so if you want to go beyond NAFTA the first thing you have to do is first fulfill NAFTA then go then go beyond so I think that there's certainly a whole fraction for business leaders on both sides of the border in terms of what governments can do to move the agenda ahead I would focus on three issues first of all regulations which were also mentioned by Ambassador Hill I work on day-to-day issues of the US-Mexico economic relationship and rules of origin and different regulations are not only a real headache but they make it very difficult to take advantage of the complementarity of our economies I can't underscore this enough secondly, border issues border infrastructure security and trade come together and everyone speaks about that we've heard about the SPP for a number of years but I think it's time for the rubber to hit the ground as they say to have much more investment on state-of-the-art border infrastructure if we don't do that we'll have a lot of rules that say that you can export and import goods tariff-free but you need roads and you need an efficient border to deal with that and thirdly wind energy I think that there's too much focus on hydrocarbons when we speak of energy I think that there is a wide scope for cooperation between Mexico and the US on energy on things like renewables wind energy I understand that there's a high degree of complementarity between the wind conditions of Baja California the needs of California to generate energy from renewable sources definitely push that I wouldn't sort of open the Pandora's box of hydrocarbons I would use other issues of the energy relationship I think Arturo's comment is extremely well taken and I think it goes to the heart of the book as well there is sort of a takeaway from this book for me it is that to some extent the onus for change in the relationship is on Mexico but also the agency is Mexico's and so you could either take that well or not on the other side of the border but I think in the end it is a story about the fact that Mexico controls its own destiny to some extent in this relationship but it's either things go down the tubes and it becomes a national security crisis or you do what India has done which is in many ways a poorer country than Mexico certainly less link to the US economy in many ways this is a larger country other global issues play in opportunities also are there to do that and on Margaret's point I think on the other side there is something however that the US can do US policy makers can do in the short term and we are going to see what happens with the state visit that Mexico's president is making to Washington in May whether this happens or not but think of this as a strategic partnership at most in the US policy system people can think of one big issue at a time with regards to one country when it gets down to it on that but to the extent we can take that one issue and right now it is drug traffic and security and use it as a moment, as a key moment to think about the other issues in there I mean can we talk about renewables because there's some exciting stuff in renewables that could be done right now can we talk about trucking and at least some sort of moderate approach and there's some possibilities there and some of the other trade barriers can we talk about border infrastructure and I think we should look on May 19th, May 20th I mean to what extent do these other issues come out or do we simply have one note with Mexico and right now it's security and that's all we can think about I'd like to think and hearing from people in the administration I think there's a good chance that we're going to hear more than just security that we're going to hear the beginnings of a discussion of a strategic partnership of these broader set of issues which security will be dominant but there will be other things there and I think we can hope in the long term that Mexico will be able to push some of those other issues new things to catch people's attention not only the US and Latin America and around the world Boy, I hope Andrew's right but I must admit that my sense is that the US tends to go back and forth dealing with international problems or it has two choices one is cooperating with other countries or it's trying to build fences and keep the problems that are created in the rest of the world out and it seems to me that there was a tendency even before the economic crisis worldwide that the US was very US population the mood in the US was anti-globalization anti-international cooperation we saw that with polls on trade we saw that when the US rejected investment from overseas we saw that in just enormous number of ways about the way to deal with this anxiety in the American population was not to find cooperation with the rest of the world but to fence out the problems and the problem is that Mexico is so, as Sid said, dependent on the US that when we fence out the rest of the world we fence out Mexico Mexico really gets hit very, very hard by that kind of attitude and on the other hand it can benefit a great deal from the cooperation but I don't see that progressing for many of the reasons we've heard here and the reason that the Obama administration is not giving the attention to Mexico is that it just doesn't matter that much to and he has, there's a whole set of other problems anxieties, challenges that he faces that Mexico is just very low on that list and that's where I liked your formulation it takes great risk or great opportunity to move the United States and when you say great it's not just that means very, very large because the US faces enormous risks already and enormous opportunities in many places and so it really has to be really beyond what, it's not just great it's super great risk or super great opportunity to move the United States at this point. Thanks Peter. Sidney, last words? I just want to make two brief points quickly I never answered Margaret's question I realized about business if Obama would have speak up the business would speak up the reason they're not doing it is they don't expect anything they don't expect support from the government or from the Congress and they don't want to push against a a rope because they would rather have some help and the second point that maybe one of the reasons I wrote the book is that in my view the US-Mexican relationship is other than on issues of war and peace where it doesn't come in I think is the most important relationship the United States has we have a long border problems that originate there come up here when they had the financial collapse the United States reacted they reacted because they thought US banks would fall we reacted earlier we made a $50 billion loan to help pay off the Teso Mono I mean we do things from Mexico at a critical moment and we could avoid those critical moments if in fact the president fully understood that it doesn't matter it matters what happens there matters more on issues of war and peace than what happens in any other country in the world I mean we go crazy our stock market when the Greek economy looks like it's going to collapse Greece is a trivial thing for the US economy and yours political scene compared to Mexico and I wish the president would recognize that thank you thank you very much Sydney's book I think underscores the centrality of the relationship of Mexico to the US there's lots to be thinking about as we go forward I'd like to thank our three distinguished panelists and their predecessors for making an introductory remarks thanks Sid very much for sharing his thoughts with us and thank all of you for having come it's been a very interesting very interesting session I think you'll find the book extremely interesting if you haven't read it and if you would like to get your copy signed by Sydney he is here for that thank you all very much