North America Archive

MEXICO CITY — Mexican President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto ran on an agenda alien to many in his once-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party: change. More specifically, Peña Nieto emphasized the need for structural reforms that many in the PRI have showed little enthusiasm for approving in recent years. But Peña Nieto says times have changed, and he has promised that an ambitious agenda of structural reforms will mark his presidency. He also insists there’s no going back to the past, when the PRI earned a checkered reputation for corruption and crony capitalism prior to losing power in 2000 after 71 straight years […]

Though largely overlooked amid the coverage of Mexico’s deteriorating security situation over the past six years, outgoing President Felipe Calderón made noteworthy gains in Mexican foreign policy during his tenure. With the victory in Sunday’s presidential election of Enrique Peña Nieto marking the return to power of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) after 12 years, some might expect a shift in the country’s foreign policy agenda. In considering what Mexico and the world might expect from the incoming Peña Nieto administration, however, it helps to look first at the important developments under Calderón. Calderón’s first foreign policy challenge was repairing […]

When the U.S. approached eight countries with the idea to expand the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), it did not invite its North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) partners, Canada and Mexico, along. The exclusion of the two countries from what is being touted as potentially the most important economic bloc in the Pacific Rim was deliberate. The TPP seeks to liberalize trade by completely removing tariffs and other trade barriers, while also strengthening measures to protect intellectual property, two moves that Canada particularly had resisted within NAFTA. However, when the U.S., Australia, Malaysia, Peru and Vietnam join founding members Brunei, Chile, […]