When German Chancellor Angela Merkel paid a two-day visit to Mexico over the weekend, she was all business.
Focusing on the topics of bilateral trade and investment, she got straight to the point in her meeting with President Enrique Peña Nieto.
Although ostensively, Merkel’s main reason for visiting Mexico was to reach out to the Aztec nation as a courtesy prior to the G-20 meeting in Hamburg next month. She clearly wanted to send a message of anti-protectionism (i.e., anti-Trumpism) and to let it be known that her government is adamantly in favor of free trade and open markets.
Indeed, ever since the decision by Great Britain a year ago to pull out of the EU and the disastrous fiasco of the G-7 summit in Sicily last month, Merkel has assumed the role of unofficial champion of free trade, gallantly trying to crush international trade barriers and open markets around the globe.
And she made a point during her meeting with Peña Nieto to underscore the fact that Germany is eager and ready to do business with Mexico, which could take up the much-feared slack in trade with the United States (which last year accounted for 80 percent of total Mexican exports and imports).
During her whirlwind visit to Mexico, Merkel was accompanied by a large delegation of German business leaders, all looking to shore up commercial and economic ties with Mexico, and those entrepreneurs met with Mexican businessmen on Saturday for an early lunch at the Interactive Economy Museum before heading back to Berlin.
It’s a message Peña Nieto was eager to listen to.
Germany is already a major trade and investment partner for Mexico.
Last year, combined bilateral trade between the two nations amounted to $17.8 billion, making Germany Mexico’s largest trade partner in the European Union and fifth-largest worldwide, and there are more than 1,300 German companies with accumulated capital holdings in Mexico exceeding $25 billion.
And with a revamping of the 1997 EU-Mexico Free Trade Agreement expected to be hammered out later this year, binational economic and commercial ties could increase even further.
But there are caveats to the alliance.
Merkel, who has always been a hardliner when it comes to human rights and political transparency, has, in the past, frowned on Mexico’s dubious record of organized crime and corruption.
During her visit, the German chancellor made a point of steering clear of these topics, instead placating her Mexican counterpart by focusing on topics they do agree on, such as climate change and the need for a humane approach to migration.
She intentionally did not bring up the issues of Mexico’s surging drug violence or mounting security concerns.
However, sooner or later, these issues will come to bear on the Mexican-German relationship, and even though a pragmatic Merkel skirted past them this time around during her 20-hour sojourn in Latin America’s second-largest economy, she clearly has them front and center on her agenda.
If Mexico wants to widen ties with Germany, or for that matter, the European Union in general, it is going to have to clean up its act in terms of corruption and security.
Otherwise, Merkel’s visit will turn out to have been just a show of ceremony and stagecraft.
Thérèse Margolis can be reached at [email protected].
