Would the tariffs be permanent?
—If Mexico corrects, they could be eliminated, but neither would they be permanent in the sense that, once the costs were paid in net present value of the costs imposed on North American companies, those tariffs would have to be eliminated.
This has a fixed cost and an investment cost, in flows. So, as long as the costs in flows remain, to that extent you can keep the tariffs.
Will the ruling stick only to what the T-MEC says?
—The panelist’s obligation is to see if it was breached, to analyze the facts. Mexico will have to explain why it does not fail to comply with the T-MEC according to its interpretation, with its obligations.
There have already been two messages from the president: One was a slightly comical message, which shows the great histrionic capacity of our chief executive, of sending messages to his allies that he is not afraid of this, by playing the song by Chicho Che . Something nice but shallow.
The other thing was an email that he apparently sent to Jesús Seade in which he apparently told him that we are not breaching anything.
Will the ruling be for or against Mexico?
—In the T-MEC there are two ways to resolve differences: one is government to government, which is what is happening right now.
The second, which has not been explored yet, is that the affected companies start a company-state procedure, that they go to the government and say ‘you are affecting me’.
This has not happened because the companies have seen that the fastest way to try to force the government to comply is through the Judiciary, which is why they have gone to the amparo process. Here there have been a large number of suspensions and complaints from the Chief Executive to the Judiciary.
According to my reading, I am convinced that Mexico is failing to comply with these commitments, there are quite clear violations, but the companies have preferred to follow the path of injunctions.
Will the energy issue be resolved in the consultations?
—The probability is almost zero, especially after seeing the president’s response during the morning last week. If the arguments are along those lines, in the song ‘Oh, how scary!’ of Chico Che, I would say that the possibility that they will be resolved in consultations is zero.
Thinking about how the chief executive has operated in many of these situations, the president is going to prefer to blame someone else.
Starting from the assumption that Mexico is guilty of violating commitments, I see that the president is hardly going to accept it; he will always prefer to tell his audience that it is someone else’s fault and not his.
So, he prefers that this go to the panel and be the panelists who comment on the mistake of not understanding the T-MEC, and tell his audience that someone else is trying to hit the Mexican people, when what is hitting them the most is having no competition in a market that affects us all.
How long will it take to reach a solution?
—At the end of the day, this is going to bring us almost to the end of this administration. If tariffs were to be imposed, it would be near the end of this administration and the beginning of the next.
Even if the government remains in Morena, let someone else decide how to put this in order, and if we want to have an energy sector that is what the Mexican people deserve, or an energy sector in the hands of the Mexican State, which is equivalent that nobody has it, even if it seems that it is ours.
