A month ago, Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador publically denied his energy policies breached the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
This was after Canada had joined the U.S. in a dispute with Mexico over a breach in Mexico’s energy policies as regards the trade agreement, according to Reuters last month.
It came3 down to the United States and Canada saying they were challenging Mexico’s nationalistic energy policies under the three-way North American free trade pact known as USMCA.
However, on Thursday, Lopez Obrador again brought up the energy policy dispute, calling on his Latin American neighbors to urge a halt to United States and Canadian “interventionism.”
“We have to convince the leaders of Canada and the United States … [to] change the policy of predominance that has been imposed, the policy of hegemony, of wanting to intervene in the internal affairs of other nations,” he said Thursday during a virtual meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).
“This obsolete policy – the interventionism, the coups – must be changed. [The United States and Canada] should respect the sovereignty of [other] countries [in the region] and … [realize] that we need each other,” López Obrador said. “[Together] we can become much stronger as a region in the world.”
There is a problem brewing and it appears to be getting bigger, the more AMLO plays it… It comes down to the trade agreement allowing for investments in renewable energy sources.
Last month, during talks with CEOs of numerous companies in the U.S., there were complaints over a worsening investment climate in Mexico, particularly in the energy sector.
Among concerns raised at the meeting were policies that executives said unfairly favored Mexico’s state-owned energy companies at the expense of private rivals, as well as delays in securing permits for companies.
AMLO appears unwilling to water down his plan to strengthen the Federal Electricity Commission and the state oil company Pemex at the expense of foreign firms, which have invested heavily in renewables in Mexico.
