Tough Talk May Be Right Language for the President’s Visit to Mexico

As President Clinton arrives today on his first visit to Mexico, he ought to take a lesson from his No. 2’s disastrous tour through China earlier this year.

Vice President Al Gore was pilloried for sounding such an uncertain trumpet in Beijing. In the process, Gore didn’t just hurt himself. He also put one more brick on the wall Clinton must climb to convince Congress not to revoke China’s most-favored-nation trading status. The reason: Gore’s fear of offending his hosts weakened the administration’s argument that it could effectively pressure China on human rights and other concerns while maintaining trade relations.

Clinton faces the same risk in Mexico. The president can point to some positive trends in the relationship, including the early Mexican repayment of the U.S. bailout after the peso’s collapse in 1994. But there are also persistent problems--drugs, illegal immigration, the direction of Mexico’s economic development. If Clinton whitewashes these issues, he will do more than strain credulity. He will ultimately strengthen those urging a more confrontational policy toward Mexico, and sabotage his own hopes of expanding the North American Free Trade Agreement into South America.

Those plans already have been pushed into limbo as Clinton tries to persuade Congress to grant him “fast track” authority to negotiate future trade deals. Much as the administration protests the linkage, disappointment over developments in Mexico is increasing congressional resistance to providing Clinton the tools to expand NAFTA. Progress in Mexico would help Clinton in Congress.

Clinton is right that engagement offers a more profitable long-term strategy than intensifying confrontation with either Mexico or China. But Gore’s visit to China showed that the conciliatory approach can produce paralysis if all disagreements are muffled for fear of disrupting the relationship itself. To maintain political support for engagement with Mexico and China, Clinton has to demonstrate that it allows the United States to advance its legitimate interests without the belligerent steps his critics are urging.

That’s why even some administration officials are worried that Clinton will overly accentuate the positive when he meets with Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo this week. “We are so afraid to assert our own interests in an appropriate way,” said one dubious administration official. “But we did bail these guys out. . . . The last thing we need for fast track is to have Clinton down there playing footsie with Zedillo.”

White House officials insist that those fears are unfounded. Clinton won’t pick fights with Zedillo, says one, but he will press for joint action on such tough issues as drugs, immigration and the environment. “Whatever the short-term political response, the two presidents think the only way you can beat these things is together,” said the official.

That’s a sensible approach--if it produces results. Clinton and Zedillo are planning to announce a joint strategy for fighting drugs. Congressional skeptics, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), have already prepared their own scorecard for measuring it. They want Zedillo to reauthorize U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents to carry weapons in Mexico; permit U.S. surveillance planes to track smugglers across Mexican airspace; intensify prosecution of corrupt Mexican law enforcement officials; and allow extradition of Mexican drug figures indicted in U.S. courts. If Clinton lets this moment pass without winning such tangible commitments from Zedillo, he may be guaranteeing himself another divisive congressional battle next year over whether to sanction Mexico for its performance on drugs.

On the economy, Clinton is likely to trumpet the news that the Mexican economy is growing again. But the evidence suggests Mexico is mutating into an Asian-style economy that suppresses domestic wages to attract foreign investment and tries to grow primarily by exporting to the U.S.

That’s not in either country’s long-term interest. Declining wages threaten Mexico’s precarious political stability. And if the U.S. continues to run trade deficits with Mexico--as it has since 1995--American enthusiasm for expanding free trade through the hemisphere is likely to erode.

Jeff Faux, president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, says Clinton should offer Mexico a grand bargain: relief of its debilitating foreign debt in return for reforms that would attack drug corruption, institute fully democratic electoral competition and strengthen unions independent of the government-dominated CTM labor federation, which has acquiesced in the suppression of wages.

That’s undoubtedly too much to bite off at one sitting (and probably too much to ask of external intervention at all). But Clinton could take a manageable first step by meeting with the leaders of independent unions, much as he is meeting with opposition political parties. Independent unions that can bargain for decent wages are one key to building a Mexican middle class that could eventually consume more American products. And U.S. pressure for reform could help free unions strengthen their foothold.

None of this means that Clinton ought to hector Zedillo or ignore U.S. complicity in these problems. The need to repay the U.S. bailout helped shape Mexico’s export-oriented economic strategy. And without the United States, Mexican drug smugglers would have no market. Nor should Clinton minimize the steps Zedillo has already taken to root out drug corruption. As Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas), a GOP leader on trade, points out, acknowledging progress can lessen the sting of raising concerns.

The key, however, is to raise the concerns. Mexico and the United States aren’t adversaries, but their relationship could grow increasingly adversarial if they make no progress on the real issues dividing them. The same is true in even larger measure for China. In both cases, Clinton may fear that spotlighting disputes strengthens the forces of confrontation. The opposite is more the case. If engagement becomes a synonym for appeasement, support for the policy will, and should, inevitably collapse.

Ronald Brownstein’s column appears in this space every Monday.