MEXICO CITY _ Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Saturday that he expected "good results" from high-level talks scheduled in Washington this week aimed at dissuading President Trump from imposing punitive tariffs on all Mexican goods exported to the United States.
"There is an atmosphere favorable to dialogue in our country as well as in the United States," Lopez Obrador said at a news conference in the gulf state of Veracruz.
The Mexican president, who took office Dec. 1, is facing his first international crisis following Trump's announcement on Thursday that Washington would impose escalating tariffs starting at 5% on all Mexican imports until Mexico moved to shut down U.S.-bound migration _ mostly of Central Americans traversing Mexican territory en route to the border.
Trump's actions caught Mexican officials off guard and stirred fears of a prospective financial crisis in in Mexico, where a long-sluggish economy is heavily dependent on cross-border trade. A plunging peso and economic distress in Mexico could also revive illicit migration to the United States from Mexico, which has declined in recent years even as Central American arrivals have soared.
The Mexican president quickly dispatched a top negotiating team, including Marcelo Ebrard, the foreign minister, to Washington for talks scheduled for Wednesday with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and others.
The 5% surcharge on all Mexican imports to the United States would go into effect June 10, Trump said, and escalate to 25% by Oct. 1, remaining in place "until Mexico substantially stops the illegal inflow of aliens coming through its territory."
Mexican officials have expressed confidence that they can change Trump's mind on the tariff issue, noting that he has previously backed down on other pronouncements _ such as repeated threats to shut down border crossings between the United States and Mexico. Their apparent hope is that the tariff threat is a negotiating marker, not a fait accompli.
The optimism voiced in official circles here is based in large part on the belief that U.S. manufacturers, farmers, auto makers and others heavily dependent on Mexican trade will object. There is also the unappetizing prospect, from a U.S. consumer perspective, that the tariffs would ultimately be passed on to U.S. purchasers, who are avid buyers of many Mexican products, including vegetables, fruits, autos and TV sets.
The tariffs would likely also trigger retaliatory surcharges by Mexico on U.S. exports here _ though Lopez Obrador stressed Saturday that he doesn't want to enter into a "commercial war, a war of tariffs, of taxes" with the United States.
Mexico is the United States' third largest trade partner, after China and Canada, with $671 billion in binational commerce in goods and services in 2018, according to the office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
Still many observers are skeptical that Trump will change his mind.
"Trump operates thinking about himself and his popularity, nothing else," Esteban Ilades, a columnist with Milenio, wrote on Twitter. "The problem of engaging with an irrational actor, like the president of the United States, is that no situation is favorable. If you surrender to his demands, you lose. If you keep quiet, you lose. And if you respond, you run the risk that he will raise the level of threats."
