The Foreign Service Journal, October 2016

40 OCTOBER 2016 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL with the Mexican president on Aug. 31 and spoke of his respect for the Mexican people and their president. Later that evening, Trump gave a hard-line policy speech on immigration in Phoenix in which he again insisted that Mexico will pay for the wall. Responding to public indignation over his cordial meeting with the Republican candidate, Peña Nieto tweeted that he told Trump during the meeting that Mexico would not pay. Former Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda called the visit Peña Nieto’s worst public relations disaster. With polls showing that 85 per- cent of Mexicans disapproved of the visit, Peña Nieto accepted the resignation of his finance minister, who had reportedly proposed the idea. The Mexican president’s unprecedented invitation to both presidential candidates to visit him before the election reveals the depth of Mexican concerns over the future of their partner- ship with the United States. Whatever the outcome, the two countries will have to find ways to preserve and advance this crucial relationship. Not For the First Time This is not the first time that vital Mexican interests have been at stake in an American presidential race. In 1992, the U.S. elec- toral campaign went into full swing as the NAFTA negotiations were nearing completion. Mexico’s President Carlos Salinas de Gortari linked his economic reform program to expanding trade and attracting foreign investment through NAFTA. Salinas staked his political reputation on a successful conclusion of NAFTA, and pressed for the treaty to go into force by early 1993. His term was ending in 1994, and he hoped to reap the politi- cal and economic benefits of an early boom, according to Jorge Castaneda, now a professor at New York University. Salinas portrayed NAFTA as an opportunity to transform the Mexican economy so that it would “export goods, not people.” Mexico’s approval of NAFTA was a foregone conclusion, but would it be approved in the United States? NAFTA figured prominently in the campaign debates involv- ing President George H. W. Bush, Governor Bill Clinton and billionaire businessman Ross Perot. Bush staunchly defended the NAFTA negotiations, but Clinton was somewhat ambivalent, citing the need to include labor and environmental protections in the agreement. Independent populist candidate Ross Perot made opposition to NAFTA his signature issue. Perot predicted that if NAFTA were approved, there would be a “giant suck- ing sound” as American manufacturing jobs were siphoned into Mexico to take advantage of much lower labor costs and less regulation. Furthermore, he argued, Mexico was governed by a one-party system that neither respected labor rights nor enforced its own environmental protection laws. Perot attracted support from labor unions, environmental groups, consumer advocates and economic nationalists. While refraining from public comment, Salinas and his circle initially counted on President Bush’s re-election. Bush was a strong advocate of NAFTA and his negotiating team, led by Special Trade Representative Carla Hills, had established excel- lent relationships with their Mexican counterparts. The Mexican public, too, having lived under one-party rule for more than 60 years, expected a Bush victory. Early in the campaign, the Mexi- can embassy’s economic minister counselor, Manuel Suarez Mier, alerted Pres. Salinas that Bill Clinton could win the elec- tion. According to Suarez Mier, Salinas scoffed: “Are you crazy? How could Bush fail to get a second term in a country where re- election is permitted?” Salinas scolded Suarez for “going native” after living outside of Mexico for too long. Clinton’s position on NAFTA was initially an enigma to Mexi- can officials. In 1991, Suarez Mier had met with Governor Bill Clinton in Arkansas. Clinton said he was not opposed to NAFTA, but if he ran for president and won, he would need to satisfy his union supporters on labor protection. Once the Clinton cam- paign started to gain support, Democratic members of Congress advised Mexican officials to start making connections with the Clinton team. Pres. Salinas chose Hermann Von Bertrab, a Mexi- can businessman and professor whom he had appointed to head Mexico’s Washington NAFTA office, for the task. Every week, Von Bertrab sent the Clinton team a highly confidential memo on the main points of Mexico’s discussions with the American and Canadian negotiators. Once Mexico’s government decided it could accept Clinton’s condition that side agreements on labor and environment be negotiated, Mexico was prepared to work on NAFTA with either a Bush or Clinton administration. In 1992, the U.S. electoral campaign went into full swing as the NAFTA negotiations were nearing completion.