Does the president still want to reopen NAFTA?
In my view, the idea of reopening the treaty is going to have a whole lot of running room in the U.S. or Canada or Mexico. Is there more that could be done within the context of NAFTA, or in a side agreement, in relation to labor and the environment? Yeah, I think there may be. And we’re already seeing – at least on the environment, on energy cooperation and on climate change – a lot more give and take with Mexico. Mexico has been battered now by the swine flu, on top of everything else. The drug-related violence along the border has now captured everybody’s attention. What is Mexico’s ability to deal with all of these things, and to continue to make some progress on the economic front? Address the failed-state idea. This idea that Mexico is on the way to being a failed state – by definition, a country that cannot control itself, that has ceded territory to criminal bands or others – has no validity at all. Look at how the government of Mexico responded to the swine flu. They may have
