Politics to Shadow Obama’s Trade Talks in Mexico

 

WASHINGTON — President Obama travels to Mexico on Wednesday for a brief but politically fraught visit aimed at forging closer trade ties with America’s two closest neighbors even as his party’s leaders back home have vowed to undercut his efforts.

Mr. Obama will meet with the leaders of Mexico and Canada in the rapidly growing city of Toluca, to the west of Mexico City, the capital, at what his advisers consider a critical juncture in his efforts to negotiate a broad Asian-Pacific trade pact that would encompass roughly 40 percent of the global economy across a dozen nations. Both Mexico and Canada have joined the negotiations in the last two years.

The whirlwind visit — he will return to Washington on Wednesday evening without staying the night — will offer Mr. Obama a chance to reassure his counterparts about his capacity to deliver at a time when he faces significant hurdles at home. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leaders in Congress, oppose legislation giving him authority similar to that of his predecessors to negotiate trade deals.

Michael B. Froman, the president’s trade representative, tried to reassure Democrats on Tuesday that the administration would be sensitive to their concerns about workplace and environmental standards in putting together the new trade pact, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP. He noted that as a candidate, Mr. Obama promised to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, known as Nafta.

“And that’s exactly what we’re doing in TPP, upgrading our trading relationships not only with Mexico and Canada but with nine other countries as well,” Mr. Froman said in a speech at the Center for American Progress, a liberal research group in Washington.

That assertion drew scorn from critics. “I don’t think that expanding on the Nafta model and extending it to nine more nations was what the unions, environmental groups or Democratic Party activists had in mind when Obama said he would renegotiate Nafta,” said Lori Wallach, a trade expert at Public Citizen, a liberal advocacy group.

President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico, who will host Mr. Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada, will want to use the summit meeting to gauge Mr. Obama’s commitment to the negotiations.

“He wants the idea of North America to be relaunched,” said Gustavo Vega, an expert on United States-Mexican relations at the Colegio de México in Mexico City. He pointed to a sense among Mexican officials that the country’s importance to the United States economy had been forgotten since Nafta went into effect two decades ago and had been overshadowed by China. “They are trying to say to Obama and to Harper, ‘We are important.’ ”

Roughly one-third of United States exports go to Canada and Mexico, trade that supports roughly 14 million American jobs. But even two decades after Nafta, debate still rages about its merits or drawbacks. Ms. Wallach’s group released a report last week compiling government data to argue that not only did Nafta’s promised benefits not materialize, but that many of the results were the opposite of what was promised, citing lost jobs, slower manufacturing and large trade deficits.

Trade advocates cited their own statistics to defend the treaty. In testimony to Congress last month, Carla A. Hills, who was the elder President George Bush’s trade representative and helped put together Nafta, said all sides had gained through the increased flow of goods and investment. “As a result of the market openings created by the Nafta, economic activity among the three nations exploded,” she said.

Mr. Obama’s trip comes at a complex time for Mr. Peña Nieto, whose star is shining brighter abroad than it is at home. Legislators recently have approved broad changes to Mexico’s education system, tax system and antitrust regulation. Most important, they agreed to open up the country’s closed energy industry, raising the prospect of foreign investment in Mexican oil and gas for the first time in 75 years. But ordinary Mexicans have yet to see many benefits. The economy grew only an estimated 1.3 percent last year.

On security, Mr. Peña Nieto has pulled back from his predecessor’s close cooperation with the United States, but the emergence of powerful vigilante groups battling a drug cartel in Michoacán State forced him to address security problems, and he sent soldiers and the police there last month to restore order.

Mr. Obama’s efforts to pass immigration changes will also come up. While he had hopes for a bipartisan compromise, Republicans recently said they doubted legislation would pass this year.

Ms. Hills said Tuesday that the Toluca meeting “provides an outstanding opportunity” for the three leaders to agree “on concrete actions like collaborating on trade positions in the Trans-Pacific Partnership and moving forward on regulatory compatibility” to make North America more competitive.

But Peter Hakim, president emeritus of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington research group, said that “the significance of the visit has fallen precipitously” with Mr. Obama’s fading hopes for immigration legislation or trade authority. “If no progress can be made on either, what’s the point?” he asked. “Things now look like the tripartite meeting will be reduced to a celebration of Mexico progress on reforms plus a lot of what-ifs.”

Peter Baker reported from Washington, and Elisabeth Malkin from Mexico City.