Mexican voters will cast ballots for their next president on Sunday, June 2. Polls suggest that former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum will succeed the highly popular Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a leader who also happens to be her political benefactor.
What are Sheinbaum’s politics? What have Mexican voters demanded on issues such as energy, economics, and immigration? And how will a new administration change relations with the United States, especially as it gears up for its own election?
Arturo Sarukhán, Mexico’s former ambassador to the United States, joined FP’s Ravi Agrawal to discuss.
Arturo Sarukhán, Mexico’s former ambassador to the U.S., explains the paradoxical popularity of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). He is the country’s “most successful retail politician” and so is capable of making citizens feel they are no longer invisible to their government, even as his approval ratings on specific policies remain low.
As Mexicans head to the polls, AMLO hopes to hand the baton to his protegée, former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum. Sarukhán ponders how much Sheinbaum will differentiate herself from her mentor, especially on key policies like energy.
Under his six-year term, López Obrador has taken the Mexican government down “a slippery slope of democratic weakening.” Sarukhán details the policies that he fears may lead Mexico to become an illiberal democracy.
Sarukhán says that Mexico’s growth is not at the rate that it could be going. He offers policy prescriptions to change that and, alongside Canada and the United States, make this the “North American century.”
AMLO’s foreign policy has been muted, arguing that “the best foreign policy is a good domestic policy.” If Sheinbaum wins, how will she change Mexico’s profile on the world stage? “I think she will be much more kosher,” Sarukhán predicts.
Arturo Sarukhán
Former Mexican ambassador to the United States
Arturo Sarukhán served as the Mexican ambassador to the United States from 2007 to 2013. Today, he is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, an associate fellow at Chatham House, and a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute. Sarukhán also teaches as an adjunct lecturer at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and is a distinguished visiting professor at the Annenberg School of Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California. He is also the president of Sarukhan + Associates and a columnist for Mexico City’s El Universal newspaper.
Ravi Agrawal
Editor in chief, Foreign Policy
Ravi Agrawal is the editor in chief of Foreign Policy, the host of FP Live, and a regular world affairs analyst on TV and radio. Before joining FP in 2018, Agrawal worked at CNN for more than a decade in full-time roles spanning three continents, including as the network’s New Delhi bureau chief and correspondent. He is the author of India Connected: How the Smartphone Is Transforming the World’s Largest Democracy.
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