CNN
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With more than 98 million eligible voters, some 70,000 candidates and more than 20,000 public offices in contention, from Mexico The general elections on June 2 will be the most important in the country’s history.
But it’s not just the scale of the event that makes it so important to observers across the US border.
For the first time in its history, the country seems ready to elect its first female president. The two favorites are both women: Claudia Sheinbaum, of the Morena party, supported by the government coalition Sigamos Haciendo Historia, and Xóchitl Gálvez, supported by a coalition of opposition parties.
The vote is also significant because it takes place in the same year as the US presidential election – which only happens once every 12 years – and comes at a time of transition in relations between the two countries.
“The years when the United States only wanted a secure and stable Mexico are over. Now she is also interested in a country with good public policy,” said Rafael Fernández de Castro Medina, director of the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of California, San Diego, noting the growing number of Latinos in the United States and Mexico. the growing ties between the two countries.
Here’s a look at some of the biggest issues affecting U.S.-Mexico relations that will be influenced by Sunday’s vote:
Mexico became the United States’ largest trading partner last year, surpassing China and Canada.
Experts say this is largely because geopolitical issues such as the pandemic, the legacy of Trump’s trade war against China and the war in Ukraine have all encouraged quasi-shoring. supply chains closer to home – which has boosted U.S. imports from and around Mexico. investment in the country.
The creation of the USMCA trade agreement, which took effect in 2020 between Mexico, the United States and Canada, was key to facilitating this change.
“The USMCA offered, in this favorable context, a legal regulatory framework that brought a lot of certainty to the three North American countries, and Mexico seized the opportunities and strengthened its preferential tariffs to achieve this,” explained Lila Abed , director of the AEUMC. the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center.
However, it was not all plain sailing. Mexico’s compliance with the USMCA has been a point of contention between the administration of current Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and that of US President Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump.
“The next president of Mexico will have to face a series of disputes that the United States, supported by Canada, has filed within the framework of the USMCA,” emphasizes Abed.
“These range from (López Obrador’s) ban on the importation of transgenic corn for human consumption; the shift toward a nationalist energy policy, which has affected U.S. investments in electricity and hydrocarbons, as well as the lack of emphasis on clean energy,” Abed said.
According to Abed, whoever wins the Mexican presidency on June 2 will face a lawsuit from the United States over these issues. They will also have to renegotiate the agreement when it is renewed in 2026.
![Workers pack avocados for export at the Los Cerritos avocado group ranch in Ciudad Guzman, Jalisco state, Mexico, February 10, 2023. Mexico became the largest trading partner of the United States in 2023.](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/gettyimages-1246998896.jpg?q=w_1110,c_fill)
Many analysts believe the United States is currently downplaying disputes over the USMCA, hoping that it can ease differences in other areas, both on Mexican domestic issues – such as alleged human rights abuses. man, the government’s treatment of journalists and the increase in political assassinations. – and bilateral concerns such as immigration and drug trafficking.
“It’s very transactional. Mexico has agreed to partially manage the immigration crisis in the United States, keeping immigrants on Mexican territory and handling their deportation, in exchange for the United States not activating these prosecutions “, said Raquel López Portillo Maltos, executive secretary of the youth group of the Think Tank of the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations (Comexi).
Jorge Alberto Schiavon Uriegas, vice president of Mexico’s Center for Foreign Policy Studies and Analysis, said López Obrador was following a quid pro quo policy toward both Trump and Biden, and that could continue with Sheinbaum, if he is elected.
“Mexico is committed to tackling the two main Mexican issues affecting the United States and which will determine the next election: migration and fentanyl. In return, the United States has significantly reduced its criticism of Mexico’s democratic and institutional weakness and reduced its interventions, leaving more room for López Obrador’s domestic policies,” Schiavon Uriegas said.
Although migration across the 3,000-kilometre-long border is a common concern, the issue is far less on the agenda of Mexican politicians than in the United States – where it could be a deciding factor in the vote of November, according to Carin Zissis, editor-in-chief. -head of the Society of the Americas/Council of the Americas website.
“Sheinbaum’s and Gálvez’s speeches on migration are neither very strong nor very different from each other, nor do they really address what to do with migrants in the country,” he said. she declared.
“The proof is that during the last presidential debate, when migration was discussed, the main angle was that of Mexican migrants currently living in the United States; they were talking to their potential voters north of the border and to the Latino community in general, which is large and powerful thanks to remittances.
The problem for American politicians is that they need buy-in from their Mexican counterparts for their own immigration policies to succeed.
Zissis gave the example of how Lopez Obrador made Mexico “part of Trump’s wall” by sending “thousands of National Guard and army members to take care of migration control.”
“Trump didn’t need to build the wall because Mexico is the wall,” Zissis said.
![A Mexican security guard is seen across the border in Piedras Negras, a city in Mexico, as immigrants wait to be processed at a U.S. Border Patrol transit center after crossing the border in Eagle Pass, Texas, December 22, 2023.](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/gettyimages-1868368926.jpg?q=w_1110,c_fill)
Abed, of the Mexico Institute, said Mexico’s next president would face a different conundrum than previous leaders because the country had evolved from just a transit country, through which immigrants transited on their way to in the United States, to a country in many cases their final destination. stop.
“The response of the López Obrador government has been to transport the migrants waiting at the Mexico-US border to the southeast of the country and leave them there. The migration authorities are overwhelmed, the Mexican Refugee Assistance Commission (Comar) is also overwhelmed, the centers where migrants stay are very precarious, migrants – in particular unaccompanied minors and women, as well as young people – are threatened by organized crime and human traffickers. , and their human rights could be violated,” detailed Abed.
She said the next Mexican government will have to take responsibility for this large migrant population “and decide whether to grant them a temporary visa, whether to allow them to work, whether they will have access to medical services, etc. . »
Fentanyl and drug trafficking
Security is another pillar of the bilateral relationship, particularly with regard to the cross-border drug trade that is ravaging both countries.
While the United States grapples with a domestic health crisis due to the amount of fentanyl on the streets, Mexico faces growing cartel-related violence – including in the run-up to elections that have been marred by dozens of assassination attempts and other political violence.
“Mexico has made progress in dismantling clandestine drug laboratories, but the next government must do more to prevent the entry through seaports of chemical precursors mainly from China, because that is where they fall into the hands of organized crime to produce these synthetic products. opioids,” Abed said.
“But the United States must also dismantle the trafficking network within (its own borders). In other words, once fentanyl arrives, its distribution throughout the country is not magical. There is a significant organized crime network in the United States that the administration must stop, bring to justice and whose activities it must restrict,” she added.
![Members of the Mexican Army and National Guard participate in Operation Juarez, aimed at reducing violence in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, February 17, 2024.](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/2024-05-28t125908z-496009169-rc2i46a68iwd-rtrmadp-3-mexico-election-security.jpg?q=w_1110,c_fill)
One issue the United States may want to return to with whoever wins on June 2 concerns reforms to Mexico’s national security law that López Obrador’s government implemented in 2018 as one of its first measures, which limited the activity of foreign agents operating in Mexican territory.
“It was a symbol, a sign that the Mexican government was not going to open the door so easily to security agencies like the DEA, the CIA and others. He removed diplomatic immunity (and) they had to register all their activities with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and so on. “, explained Abed.
Experts interviewed by CNN, however, said much of López Obrador’s confrontational rhetoric with the United States was just a facade that, at times, hid a well-oiled negotiating process with the Republican and Democratic administrations.
“López Obrador often speaks to his Mexican base and then negotiates. He knows the United States needs him on migration and security issues,” Zissis said on the Americas Society website.