The Journal. - Mexico Has a New President. Will She Be Different?

Episode Date: June 3, 2024

Claudia Sheinbaum, the former mayor of Mexico City, will become Mexico’s first female president. Sheinbaum has pledged to be a continuation of her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. WSJ’s José de Córdoba explains the two politicians’ close ties, and what her administration could mean for Mexico-U.S. relations. Further Reading: - Claudia Sheinbaum Elected as Mexico’s First Female President  - The Most Dangerous Job in Mexican Politics: Running for Mayor  Further Listening: - Texas Took On Border Security. Is It Working?  - When the Drug Cartel Takes Over  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Sunday, voters across Mexico elected a new president, Claudia Sheinbaum. Amigas, amigos, muchas gracias por esperarnos. Sheinbaum, the former mayor of Mexico City, won in a landslide. She'll take office in October, becoming the country's first female president. She'll be replacing Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a divisive leftist who's reshaped Mexican politics. But though Lopez Obrador is leaving office, his vision for Mexico will stick around. Because Sheinbaum is his hand-picked protege. He trusts her implicitly.

And I think that basically says a lot why she was chosen to run for president. That's our colleague, Jose de Cordoba. She's an enigma. Even after being so many years in public life, nobody really feels that they know her totally because she has been very, very careful never to stray out from under his shadow. never to stray out from under his shadow. Shane Baum has said she will rule independently.

And as president, she will have the chance to show what that looks like. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Kate Leinbaugh. It's Monday, June 3rd. Coming up on the show, Mexico has a new president. Will she bring about change? We'll see you next time. Find amazing hidden gems in cities full of adventures, delicious food, and diverse cultures. You'll love it so much you'll want to extend your stay beyond the matches. Get the ball rolling on your soccer getaway.

Head to visittheusa.com. Shane Baum's victory was historic not only because she'll be Mexico's first female president, but also because she'll be the first Jewish president in the majority Catholic country. Her grandparents were Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe, from Lithuania and Bulgaria. They were fleeing anti-Semitism and Nazism. Part of her family died in the concentration camps during the Nazi era. She comes from an academic family. Her mother is a very well-known biologist. Her father is a chemical engineer. She herself has a PhD in energy engineering and is also an environmental expert. And she also studied in the U.S.?

Yes, she was living in the U.S. in the Bay Area, and she took a lot of classes at University of California at Berkeley, at Stanford. And one interesting thing about Claudia is that when she was a graduate student in the United States, she helped to organize migrant Mexican berry pickers. So she does have somewhat of a knowledge of what migrants' lives are like in the United States. Sheinbaum returned to Mexico and dove into politics. She crossed paths with López Obrador in the early 2000s when he was mayor of Mexico City. She served as his environmental chief.

When he formed a new political party, Morena, Sheinbaum joined it. And in 2018, she became Mexico City's first elected female mayor. She also did a lot with transportation. She built one of those sky lift transport lines, tying a very poor area of the city to the city. She also put a rapid transit bus line that also was very helpful with traffic. One of the things people blame her for is the collapse of a metro line that caused more than two dozen deaths a couple of years ago and threatened to derail her presidential aspirations there for a while. Shane Baum rejected accusations that her policies were to blame for the accident. Another big issue she faced as mayor was organized crime.

She was able to cut down the city's homicide rate by half, and that was a very big achievement. She did that because she really invested in police, in police training. She also had enormous cooperation from the United States Embassy and from US security agencies. So she hired a lot of policemen and she was able to get them this capacity to investigate. That's very important because for the most part, that doesn't happen in Mexico. So most Mexican cops, they stand around, they can only arrest if they catch somebody in flagrante. They don't have any ability to investigate. Claudia changed the law and emphasized both intelligence,

investigation, and cooperation with other law enforcement agencies. In the same year that Sheinbaum had been elected mayor, Lopez Obrador became president. And over the last six years, Lopez Obrador has only grown in strength and popularity through policies like raising minimum wages and giving cash handouts to students and senior citizens. He's also galvanized support through populist rhetoric, slamming his political opponents as rich traitors and oppressors. Among Mexico's politicians, he has a lot of supporters. And one of his biggest is Shane Baum.

It was always clear that Claudia was Lopez Obrador's favorite. All this time, she has really been under his shadow and never, never really taken any position that criticizes him in any way. But they're also very different people. How does she compare with him? Well, they're very different. I mean, López Obrador is very charismatic. He sees himself as one of the transformative figures in Mexican history. He's totally concerned about his place in history. He's folksy, has little to no interest in the outside world. He knows no English. English. And Claudia is, I would say she is anti-charismatic. She's very disciplined. She's very methodical. She's very reserved. People say she's data-driven and keeps a tidy desk.

So why is she so popular? Because she has shown enormous loyalty to President López Obrador for many years. And her career has totally depended on López Obrador, who trusts her enormously. She's been mocked by her opponents for taking on the speech patterns of López Obrador, for taking on the speech patterns of López Obrador, who speaks sort of slowly and in this sort of tabasco, which is the state where he comes from, drawl. Vamos a dejar establecido un sistema de salud pública de primera.

She seems to copy his very speech pattern. During his six years in office, López Obrador has said he's rooting out corruption and bureaucracy. But some of his proposals have been criticized as chipping away at the country's checks and balances. In your article, you say that Sheinbaum's job will be to save the nation. Save the nation, yeah. What do you mean by that?

I think in terms of security, it's really in a crisis that's been going on now for a long time. Criminal organizations have taken more and more control of more and more of Mexican states. For me, saving the nation is doing something about the terrible crisis and insecurity that the country is in. the terrible crisis and insecurity that the country is in. Coming up, what Shane Baum wants to do to save the nation. Welcome to BMO ETFs. Where do you get your insights? Volatility has continued to be a hot topic.

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Collect more moments with more ways to earn. Air Mile. Shane Baum may be Lopez Obrador's protege, supporting his vision for the country. But she is a different person. And that could mean some differences when she takes office in October. I mean, López Obrador, you know, rules from his gut, basically. With Claudia, perhaps, you know, like I say, she's much more sophisticated and educated than López Obrador. She has a vision of the world.

And she has, while being mayor of Mexico City, has had very good relations with the U.S. in security matters. So she still is an enigma, I think. But at least the possibility exists that they could have a more fruitful dialogue. How do you think a Shanebaum presidency will affect relations with the U.S.? I think U.S. officials, they are hoping for better relations. Both Presidents Trump and President Biden were able to reach a tacit agreement with López Obrador, and that is that if the Mexican government helps stop migrants from coming into the United States, the U.S. is basically happy to not to look too closely at anything else. One area of shared concern between the U.S. and Mexico is the role

of organized crime. As president, Ló Lopez Obrador took a social welfare approach rather than armed engagement. The goal was to slow down recruitment by cartels. Lopez Obrador has a policy called hugs not bullets, which basically says you should not engage with organized crime as much and basically deal with what he believes are the root causes of crime, which is income inequality. Critics say this hugs-not-bullets policy hasn't worked and that criminal groups have grown stronger. Shane Bauman has said she will take her playbook from her time as mayor of Mexico City and apply it to the nation.

And she welcomes more cooperation from the U.S. than López Obrador. The U.S. involvement was in providing intelligence, providing training, providing support of all types. And it's one area where she has differed from López Obrador, whose security policies have been rather ambivalent vis-a-vis the United States. What is Shane Baum's approach to economic policy? Well, she promises to continue López Obrador's programs, and that is giving subsidies and pensions to all people and students. She's also said she's going to build 100 industrial parks. And in terms of what might interest the United States, she's very much interested in maintaining the free trade treaty that binds the United States, Canada and Mexico as an economic bloc.

That comes up for renewal in 2026. And she has said that she sees the relationship with the United States as essential to Mexico's economy and to providing jobs. And she's also betting heavily on the whole nearshoring phenomenon. The nearshoring phenomenon. As tensions between the U.S. and China have escalated, more American companies are looking to move manufacturing closer to home. And that has led some big-name brands like Tesla and Mattel to consider Mexico. If she's able to attract a lot of plants here,

it would make Mexico a much more prosperous place in terms of providing jobs, keeping migration down, and making the place a much more wealthier society. making the place a much more wealthier society. In some ways, she's saying she's a continuation of Lopez Obrador, right? Yes. But she also says she's independent and will be the one to govern. Yes.

She's like walking this fine line. Yes, I think that's exactly right. She's walking this fine line. Yes, I think that's exactly right. She's walking a fine line. You know, she is a creature of a very popular president, so it makes little sense to, before she's elected, to say, I don't agree with him on X, Y, or C issue. So I don't think you're going to get a big reveal until she's safely seated on the presidential chair. The election results show strong support for Sheinbaum. She got about 60 percent of the vote.

Her party also swept Congress, which means she can more easily advance her party's agenda. Jose says opponents worry that the dominance of Morena, Lopez Obrador's party, could affect the country's democracy. The party that he formed, Morena, you know, it's been an amazing electoral success. I mean, it now, in just a few years, in a decade, you know, from its founding, it now controls 23 of Mexico's 32 states. At the same time, he has debilitated the country's institutions. And Claudia Sheinbaum has gone along with a number of proposed constitutional changes that, if passed, could weaken Mexican democracy. On Sunday, Sheinbaum said her government

will guarantee the rights to free speech and a free press, and that she will never turn to authoritarianism. Nunca haríamos un gobierno autoritario ni represor. How hard will it be

for Sheinbaum to govern on her own? Well, that's the $64,000 question. And, you know, part of that is, will Lopez Obrador retire to his country home in southern Mexico in the jungle and play with his grandchildren and do gardening? Or is he going to be a constant presence in the politics of Mexico? That's a big part of that question.

The other part is, you know, López Obrador, basically, it's his party. It's, you know, his character, his charisma is the glue that holds it together. Will Claudia be able to keep the party together? It's one of the big questions hanging over the future. This episode has been updated. A previous version incorrectly said

Sheinbaum was Mexico City's first female mayor. She was the first woman to be elected as the city's mayor. That's all for today, Monday, June 3rd. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in today's episode by Anthony Harrop, Steve Fisher, and Santiago Perez. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.