Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who will transfer Mexico's presidency to his protégé Claudia Sheinbaum on Sept. 30, announced a 'pause' in relations with Canada and the U.S. – only to clarify later that relations would continue, but that he would have no contact with the ambassadors.YURI CORTEZ/AFP/Getty Images
David Agren covers Mexico and Latin America as a freelance journalist.
Canada’s ambassador to Mexico, Graeme C. Clark, presumably knew his comments on Mexico’s pending judicial reform would draw its populist President’s ire – regardless of how softly he expressed them.
“My investors are concerned, they want stability, they want a judicial system that works if there are problems,” Mr. Clark told reporters at a recent Canadian Chamber of Commerce event.
His U.S. counterpart, Ken Salazar, put it more plainly, saying the reform presents “a major risk to the functioning of Mexico’s democracy.” He added that the reform’s principal proposal, the direct election of judges, would “make it easier for cartels and other bad actors to take advantage of politically motivated and inexperienced judges.”
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who will transfer the presidency to his protégé Claudia Sheinbaum on Sept. 30, promptly blasted the ambassadors for their “interference.” Then he announced a “pause” in relations with the two countries – only to clarify later that relations would continue, but that he would have no contact with the ambassadors.
“The treaty,” he said, referring to the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), “is not for us to cede our sovereignty. It’s so we have very good commercial, economic relations which suit both nations. But it’s not so that Mexico turns into an appendage, a colony, an associate state.”
Both countries subsequently reiterated their respect for Mexican sovereignty – a reflection of the sensitivities of dealing with the nationalist President more commonly known as AMLO, who insists on countries not intervening in Mexican matters, even as he meddles across Latin America. It also reflected the leverage he has with the U.S., which has depended on Mexico for migration enforcement in an election year.
But the ambassadors’ warnings are reasonable. The reform effort has spooked investors, sent the previously strong peso tumbling and raised concerns of the country returning to the worst vices of one-party rule – with a weak separation of powers and the President holding sway over the courts.
“He’s playing hardball with our biggest trading partners,” said Brenda Estefan, professor of international politics at the IPADE business school. “His priorities have always been internal.”
The reform arrives at an inauspicious time: CUSMA is up for review in 2026. Mexico is also poised to benefit from nearshoring as companies move supply chains from China and into countries with easy access to the U.S. But the judicial reform – part of a larger suite that would also scrap or strip independence from Mexico’s autonomous agencies, such as the competition bureau and the telecoms regulator – “make it harder to get to a successful review,” said Diego Marroquín Bitar, the Bersin-Foster North America scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
AMLO’s reforms would fire all judges, including members of the Supreme Court, and put them up for election in 2025 and 2027. While some U.S. states elect judges, that’s not the case for federal ones; only Bolivia elects Supreme Court justices.
As the economist and political analyst Manuel Molano wrote in El Financiero, “judicial independence would be subject to the goodwill of sponsors and promoters of judges’ candidacies.” Those sponsors would inevitably include drug cartels, which killed more than 30 candidates in the 2024 election cycle.
Much of the disquiet in Mexico stems from the President’s perceived motives as much as the content. The judicial branch has granted injunctions against his prestige projects, such as a railway circling the Yucatán Peninsula, which cut through ecologically sensitive areas, and his attempts to put the national guard under army command, despite constitutional requirements that it have civilian leadership.
There’s also a sense of personal grievance for AMLO, for whom politics is very much about him. He opposed the selection of Norma Piña as Supreme Court president; his supporters took offence when she refused to stand and applaud at one of their few public appearances together.
But ultimately, AMLO is a nationalist preoccupied with domestic matters who has put little effort into promoting investment in Mexico. He idealizes the time preceding what he derides as the “neo-liberal period” ushered in by NAFTA, which transformed Mexico’s previously closed economy to an export-driven one. More than 80 per cent of exports now head to the U.S. and Canada.
He supported CUSMA, which was signed just before his 2018 inauguration. But in AMLO’s Mexico, nationalism supersedes regional integration and the economy.
It remains to be seen how Ms. Sheinbaum – who won office on promises of continuing AMLO’s political project, but wants to take advantage of nearshoring – handles this dilemma. Will she pursue the nationalist path, or break with her mentor and court closer continental ties? Mr. López Obrador’s influence looms large over her incoming administration, making it difficult for her to choose the latter.