10 Points on Mexico’s New President
A blowout by a candidate who was mostly unknown two years ago
Dear Friends,
I’m optimistic about the next six years in Mexico under President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum. Let’s revisit in 2030 to see how it ages.
It was a blowout. Sheinbaum received even more votes than her predecessor and mentor, Lopez Obrador. Two years ago, most Mexicans had never heard of her. As I write this, nearly 90% of the votes have been counted and Sheinbaum leads Galvez 59% to 28%. She has a commanding lead even in some of the most conservative parts of the country.1
Eighteen months ago, my friends in Mexico City dismissed my prediction that Sheinbaum would become Mexico’s next president. They said she had little recognition outside Mexico City and that Mexico wasn’t ready to elect a woman or a Jew. My hunch was based on long bike rides to remote rural villages in Oaxaca, which were plastered with a silhouette image of Sheinbaum’s ponytail and the hashtag #EsClaudia.2
Several of my friends have worked closely with Sheinbaum over the past six years while she was mayor of Mexico City. She is a perfectionist workaholic who writes her own speeches and has high standards for her team. The best profile I’ve read was published in El Pais. (Google translation here.)
Sheinbaum lived in San Francisco with her first husband and two kids during the city’s golden age from 1991 to 1995. She took graduate courses on energy efficiency at Stanford and Cal, where she did postdoctoral research at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She campaigned for Mexicans living abroad to be able to vote in Mexico’s elections and helped organize Mexican migrant cherry pickers in California.
Sheinbaum’s experience living abroad and fluency in English (unlike AMLO) will help attract more foreign investment as US companies shift manufacturing from China to Mexico and Chinese companies like BYD invest in Mexico with the hope of getting around US tariffs.
On the other hand, AMLO increased the national debt to cover increased social welfare and infrastructure in the country’s poorest regions. Unemployment in Mexico is at an all-time low and consumer confidence is high, but with high interest rates, Sheinbaum will need to attract even more foreign investment and improve the security situation.
Whether Biden or Trump wins in November, Mexico is in a strong position to renew or renegotiate the USMCA free trade agreement in 2026. The U.S. depends on Mexico to slow immigration on its southern border and will likely need to invest in EV and chip manufacturing in Mexico to compete with China.3
It would have been better for Sheinbaum (and Mexico) if her party didn’t win a super-majority in Congress. She is now expected to pass a constitutional reform proposed by Lopez Obrador, which will weaken democratic checks and balances.4
In 1960, Sri Lanka became the first country in the history of the modern world to elect a female head of government. More than half of the OECD’s 38 member countries have elected women heads of state.5 Among the OECD countries that have never been led by a woman: the U.S., Japan, Turkey, and Spain. Time to update the map below.
If the U.S. chose its president by popular vote like Mexico, Hillary Clinton would have become the first female president in 2017.6
When Lopez Obrador was elected president in 2018, pundits predicted he would turn Mexico into Venezuela, prompting a mass exodus of Mexican migrants to the U.S. Instead, more Mexicans are returning to Mexico than entering. Unemployment is at a record low, everyone is hiring, and consumer confidence is high. Now that MORENA is likely to win a super-majority in Congress, pundits now warn of the end of Mexico’s democracy. I don’t buy it. But let’s check back in 2030.
Yours,
David
It’s hard to overstate the importance of Mexico’s political transformation beginning in 2014 when Andrés Manuel López Obrador left the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) to create his own political party, the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), which went from nothing to dominating the 2018 elections in just four years. Now, MORENA is on track to achieve a supermajority in Congress and control most state governments. The poster below shows how multiparty democracy in Mexico began in opposition states and is now returning to one-party rule by a political party that didn’t even exist a decade ago.
The opposition complained that it is illegal to campaign so far out from an election. MORENA claimed incredulously that it was a grassroots movement that they had nothing to do with. BTW, I made the same claim early in Obama’s campaign, and nearly all my friends said there was no way Americans would elect a Black president.
The U.S. will push for more privatization of Mexico’s oil industry, but Sheinbaum can sidestep by arguing that the US should instead invest in renewable manufacturing to reduce our dependency on Chinese solar.
The proposed constitutional reform makes the mistake of passing legislation through the constitution, including setting teachers’ salaries and social security. Interestingly, Sheinbaum supports a constitutional prohibition on animal abuse. If it passes, it would be interested to see how it is enforced.
Including the UK (1979), Iceland (1980), Poland (1992), Chile (2006), Costa Rica (2010), South Korea (2013) and Australia (2010). Switzerland has elected eight female presidents since 1999.
The U.S. is the only country with an Electoral College. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is a proposal that does not abolish the Electoral College, but instead of a winner-takes-all system, electors would pledge to vote for the winning candidate of the national popular vote, not their state’s popular vote.
has been advocating for another approach: proportional representation with presidentialism, which sorta describes Mexico’s electoral system that might change with the constitutional reform.