Geronimo! In its latest salvo against Donald Trump’s plans to impose punitive tariffs on US companies manufacturing south of the border and to seal the frontier with a wall and make its neighbour pay, Mexico has appointed a seasoned diplomat with good ties on Capitol Hill as new ambassador to the US.
Gerónimo Gutiérrez, a former undersecretary for North America, moves to Washington from his current role running the North American Development Bank, which was set up under the North American Free Trade Agreement that Mr Trump now wants to renegotiate, writes Jude Webber in Mexico City.
“He has been undersecretary for North America (i.e. boss of both ambassadors from Canada and US), he’s been the head of NADBank and was confirmed, he’s well known and well respected among the experts, where foreign minister Luis Videgaray is less well-versed,” said Agustín Barrios Gómez, a former leftwing legislator who now heads the Mexico Image Foundation, an organisation set up to improve foreign perceptions of the country.
“Because he was head of NADBank he gets along with a lot of members of the US Congress. He is known as a straight talker who knows that Mexico brings as much to the negotiating table as the US does,” he added.
Antonio Garza, a former US ambassador to Mexico, tweeted: “Strategic, and knows the stakes, players and plenty of credibility on all sides of the aisle, both countries.”
Mr Gutiérrez replaces Carlos Sada, another respected diplomat who moves back to Mexico City to become the new undersecretary for North America.
The appointments beef up Mexico’s anti-Trump defence following the appointment of Mr Videgaray as foreign minister at the start of January.
A novice to diplomacy, Mr Videgaray was finance minister and one of President Enrique Peña Nieto’s top advisers until he was forced to resign amid the fallout from Mr Trump’s disastrous visit to Mexico last August – a trip that the minister, who knows Mr Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, orchestrated.
Mr Trump sent the peso crashing to yet another historic low this week when he used his first press conference since the election to pressure US companies. “Big, big factories” were coming to the US instead of Mexico, he predicted, reiterating his pledge to slap punishing border taxes on those that disobeyed. He also promised an immediate start to negotiations with Mexico about building a border wall, that he said Mexico would ultimately fund, probably via some sort of tax.
Mr Peña Nieto hit back with a refusal to fund any wall, a rejection of any bullying of companies and a vow that the entire US-Mexico bilateral relationship – including illicit arms sales from the US to Mexico, illegal immigration and security, as well as trade – would be on the table.
Mexico has admitted that Nafta needs updating but more than 80 per cent of its exports are sent to the US, making it very vulnerable to any abrupt departure from the status quo.