Jim Carey — Mexico’s Case Against NAFTA: An Economic and Environmental Wrecking Ball

So is Mexico so eager to open talks with the U.S. on NAFTA if it was “the worst deal ever approved” by Washington? A deal that was helping Mexico get one over on their neighbors to the north. The answer likely has something to do with the devastation that neoliberal “free trade” brings with it wherever it goes. 

Like most countries before they embraced neoliberalism, Mexico before NAFTA was once home to a diverse and robust domestic agricultural sector, less reliant on imported food and manufacturing jobs, and on track to have a fairly Western standard of living. Since the massive trade treaty took effect in 1994, however, this all changed.  Instead, NAFTA set off a series of devastating policies that are still ravaging Mexico today....

Geopolitics Alert
Mexico’s Case Against NAFTA: An Economic and Environmental Wrecking Ball

Jim Carey

See also

Erdoğan in September had called on Washington to swap Brunson for Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish Muslim cleric living in self-imposed exile in the US who Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) government accuse of orchestrating a failed coup in 2016....

Is the Trump administration trying to end Turkish membership in NATO and deepen the divide between the Global North and Global South, and East and West? First, drive Russian into China's arms, then Iran, then Turkey, all of which are armed to the teeth. Sounds like a brilliant strategy.

Trump, Pence Threaten Turkey with ‘Large Sanctions’ if US Pastor not Released
Turkish Minute

Immanuel Wallerstein — Two Cheers for Mexico’s AMLO: A Great Victory for the Left

Backgrounder. Short.

Immanuel Wallerstein
Two Cheers for Mexico’s AMLO: A Great Victory for the Left
Immanuel Wallerstein | Senior Research Scholar, Yale University, formerly a professor of sociology

Common Dreams — Mexico's 'Bernie Sanders' Wins in a Huge Historic Landslide With Mandate to Reshape the Nation

AMLO is definitely the Bernie Sanders of Mexico.…

The New York Times reports:

"Mr. López Obrador’s win puts a leftist leader at the helm of Latin America’s second largest economy for the first time in decades, a prospect that has filled millions of Mexicans with hope — and the nation’s elites with trepidation.

"The outcome represents a clear rejection of the status quo in the nation, which for the last quarter century has been defined by a centrist vision and an embrace of globalization that many Mexicans feel has not served them."

Common Dreams
Mexico's 'Bernie Sanders' Wins in a Huge Historic Landslide With Mandate to Reshape the Nation

Reuters — Ford to base Fusion production in China, ship to U.S. - sources

As with the Focus move, the decision to build the Fusion in China also signals a shift in strategy at Ford, which is responding to dwindling U.S. consumer demand for passenger cars in favor of more expensive and more profitable trucks and SUVs.

Last week, Ford said it plans to relocate production of a future battery electric vehicle to Cuatitlan, Mexico in 2020 to free up capacity at its Flat Rock, Michigan, plant to build self-driving vehicles in 2021.

Reuters

Exclusive: Ford to base Fusion production in China, ship to U.S. - sources
Paul Lienert

Rhiannon Bury — Ford cancels plans for Mexican plant as Trump blasts General Motors

Global car giant Ford has cancelled plans to build a new $1.6bn plant in Mexico and will instead invest $700m in a Michigan manufacturing base, just hours after president elect Donald Trump blasted rival General Motors for building some of its cars south of the border.

Mr Trump had used Ford as a whipping boy during his presidential campaign, suggesting that it was moving manufacturing jobs to Mexico which should have been for US workers and vowed to slap a 35pc tariff on Ford vehicles made in Mexico but sold in the US....

The Telegraph
Ford cancels plans for Mexican plant as Trump blasts General Motors

Rhiannon Bury

Don Quijones — Big-Oil Bailout Begins as Debt Spirals Down

The stakes could not be higher. According to Juan Pablo Castañón, president of the Business Coordinating Council, one of Mexico’s most powerful business lobby groups, the consequences of failing to meet the challenge would be both serious and far-reaching.

“Pemex not only finances close to 30% of the public budget, it is the central provider of basic provisions for the population,” he said. “There are some states whose dependence on its operations is irreplaceable.”…

As such, a company that was once the proud sugar daddy of Latin America’s second biggest economy, providing the lion’s share of public funds for generations, could soon become a gargantuan financial liability. The fact that this is all happening at a time when state finances are already stretched to breaking point while Mexico’s gross external debt is over $400 billion, the fourth highest of 17 of the world’s biggest emerging economies, is hardly helpful.

It’s no secret that the Peña Nieto government has long sought to privatize and asset strip large chunks of Pemex; despite the government’s feeble denials, it’s what its 2014 energy reforms were all about. Now it’s got the perfect excuse to execute its grand scheme. But first it must somehow bail it out. Then it will sell it. Already, there are concerns, given how things went in the past in Mexico, that during the entire process of bailing out Pemex and then selling it, vast sums of supposedly public money will be disappearing into very deep, hidden, private pockets.

After all, what lies in the balance is not only the future of a huge, emblematic company that can no longer function in its current form, but the health of the entire Mexican economy. As Castañon says, providing for Pemex is no longer just an energy or fiscal challenge, it’s a matter of national security.

Wolf Street
Big-Oil Bailout Begins as Debt Spirals Down

Don Quijones

Enrique Peña Nieto — Facing the Fourth Industrial Revolution

The current era of innovation, in which cutting-edge technologies are disrupting entire economic sectors at a breathtaking rate, has been called the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It is also the theme of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting this week in Davos, Switzerland – and rightly so. In the coming years, the scope and pace of innovation will transform how we produce, distribute, and consume. To maximize the benefits, we must take steps now to prepare our economies and societies, with a focus on three key areas: education, the business environment, and connectivity.…

Project Syndicate
Facing the Fourth Industrial Revolution
Enrique Peña Nieto | President of Mexico

Vladimir Platov — Billions of Dollars Laundered Through United Kingdom Banks

The UK National Crime Agency recently stated that “hundreds of billions of US dollars” are laundered through banks in the United Kingdom every year. London holds first place among world capitals with regard to the volume of drug trade and money laundering. Describing the global international drug trade network, Roberto Saviano, an Italian investigative journalist and author of Gomorrah, a book on the Neapolitan mafia, said a few days ago of the international drug trade that “Mexico is its heart and London is its head”. He also reminded readers of the British bank HSBC’s £1.2 billion fine for money laundering for a Mexican drug cartel in 2012.…

First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/07/13/billions-of-dollars-laundered-through-united-kingdom-banks/

New Eastern Outlook
Billions of Dollars Laundered Through United Kingdom Banks

Vladimir Platov

Timothy Taylor — China and India Overtake Mexico for Inflow of Foreign-Born US Residents

This is especially interesting in the immigrants from Mexico are chiefly unskilled or low-skill laborers while immigrants from China and India are highly educated and qualified in comparison.

Conversable Economist
China and India Overtake Mexico for Inflow of Foreign-Born US ResidentsTimothy Taylor | Managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, based at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota

Der Spiegel — Fresh Leak on US Spying: NSA Accessed Mexican President's Email

Category: OMG.

The National Security Agency (NSA) has a division for particularly difficult missions. Called "Tailored Access Operations" (TAO), this department devises special methods for special targets.
That category includes surveillance of neighboring Mexico, and in May 2010, the division reported its mission accomplished. A report classified as "top secret" said: "TAO successfully exploited a key mail server in the Mexican Presidencia domain within the Mexican Presidential network to gain first-ever access to President Felipe Calderon's public email account."

Spiegel Online International
Fresh Leak on US Spying: NSA Accessed Mexican President's Email
Jens Glüsing, Laura Poitras, Marcel Rosenbach and Holger Stark

The Huffington Post — The Mind-Blowing Fact About Immigration No One Mentions

More Americans have moved to Mexico in recent years than vice versa, according to government data cited in a New York Times feature by Damien Cave published over the weekend.

The data shouldn’t come as a surprise. The Pew Hispanic Trends Project estimated last year that the flow of migrants from Mexico peaked in 2007 at about 12.6 million and then began to decline slightly. A report issued by Pew on Monday noted that the population of undocumented immigrants from Mexico similarly declined from a 2007 peak of 6.9 million, to about 6 million today.

Not so for Americans, many of whom look to Mexico as a cheap place to retire or a hospitable location to start a new business. According to the Times:

Americans now make up more than three-quarters of Mexico’s roughly one million documented foreigners, up from around two-thirds in 2000, leading to a historic milestone: more Americans have been added to the population of Mexico over the past few years than Mexicans have been added to the population of the United States, according to government data in both nations.

The Huffington Post
The Mind-Blowing Fact About Immigration No One Mentions

Of course, if the emigration figures to the rest of Latin America are considered, there's a lot of emigration from the US to the South in addition to Mexico.