The North American Institute

Mexico Oil Politics Keeps Riches Just Out of Reach

2010-03-09T14:10:00-06:00

The New York Times, March 9, 2010 - “To the Mexican people, one of the great achievements in their history was the day their president kicked out foreign oil companies in 1938. Thus, they celebrate March 18 as a civic holiday. Yet today, that 72-year-old act has put Mexico in a straitjacket, one that threatens both the welfare of the country and the oil supply of the United States. The national oil company created after the 1938 seizure, Pemex, is entering a period of turmoil. Oil production in its aging fields is sagging so rapidly that Mexico, long one of the world’s top oil-exporting countries, could begin importing oil within the decade. Mexico is among the three leading foreign suppliers of oil to the United States, along with Canada and Saudi Arabia. Mexican barrels can be replaced, but at a cost. It means greater American dependence on unfriendly countries like Venezuela, unstable countries like Nigeria and Iraq, and on the oil sands of Canada, an environmentally destructive form of oil production. “As you lose Mexican oil, you lose a critical supply,” said Jeremy M. Martin, director of the energy program at the Institute of the Americas at the University of California, San Diego. “It’s not just about energy security but national security, because our neighbor’s economic and political well-being is largely linked to its capacity to produce and export oil.” Read More.

Mexican Government Waters Down Oil Reforms

2010-03-06T18:15:00-06:00

Energy Tribune, March 5, 2010 - “The Mexican government has inked an agreement with state-run oil firm Petrpleos Mexicanos (Pemex) to revise rules allowing the firm to award cash-based incentive contracts to private overseas oil companies. The deal marks yet another blow to incumbent President Felipe Calderon’s attempts to liberalise Mexico’s energy sector. Further watering down of the reforms is likely to set back Pemex’s efforts to take on the more ambitious exploration projects which have been cited as imperative in the bid to stem Mexico’s falling oil production rates. News of the agreement comes just as legislators from the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) have threatened to launch additional legal challenges against energy sector reforms introduced back in 2008 that sought to give Pemex greater financial autonomy from the state and the ability to hire private overseas firms to assist in exploration and development. The 2008 reforms were part of Calderon’s push to open up space for foreign direct investment in the state-monopolised energy sector.” Read More.

A Word From the Wise A Word From the Wise

2010-03-03T14:52:00-06:00

The New York Times, March 3, 2010 - “I was traveling via Los Angeles International Airport — LAX — last week. Walking through its faded, cramped domestic terminal, I got the feeling of a place that once thought of itself as modern but has had one too many face-lifts and simply can’t hide the wrinkles anymore. In some ways, LAX is us. We are the United States of Deferred Maintenance. China is the People’s Republic of Deferred Gratification. They save, invest and build. We spend, borrow and patch. And this contrast is playing out in the worst way — just slowly enough so the crisis never seems acute enough to take urgent action. But, eventually, infrastructure, education and innovation policies matter. Businesses prefer to invest with the Jetsons more than the Flintstones, which brings me to the subject of this column. I had a chance last week to listen to Paul Otellini, the chief executive of Intel, the microchip maker and one of America’s crown jewel companies. Otellini was in Washington to talk about competitiveness at Brookings and the Aspen Institute. At a time when so much of our public policy discussion is dominated by health care and bailouts, my public service for the week is to share Mr. Otellini’s views on start-ups. While America still has the quality work force, political stability and natural resources a company like Intel needs, said Otellini, the U.S. is badly lagging in developing the next generation of scientific talent and incentives to induce big multinationals to create lots more jobs here. Read More.

We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change

2010-02-28T21:00:00-06:00

The New York Times, February 28, 2010 - “It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.
Of course, we would still need to deal with the national security risks of our growing dependence on a global oil market dominated by dwindling reserves in the most unstable region of the world, and the economic risks of sending hundreds of billions of dollars a year overseas in return for that oil. And we would still trail China in the race to develop smart grids, fast trains, solar power, wind, geothermal and other renewable sources of energy — the most important sources of new jobs in the 21st century. But what a burden would be lifted! We would no longer have to worry that our grandchildren would one day look back on us as a criminal generation that had selfishly and blithely ignored clear warnings that their fate was in our hands. We could instead celebrate the naysayers who had doggedly persisted in proving that every major National Academy of Sciences report on climate change had simply made a huge mistake. I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion. But unfortunately, the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, the crisis is still growing because we are continuing to dump 90 million tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere — as if it were an open sewer.” Read More.

Premiers, govs say meet fruitful

2010-02-22T19:03:01-06:00

Winnipeg Sun, February 22, 2010 - “Provincial leaders wrapped up three days of meetings with U.S. governors in Washington, D.C., on Sunday and Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger said the unprecedented get-together paves the way for improved relations between Canada and the U.S. “It’s the first time the governors and premiers as a group have met together,” he said. “It was a very positive tone and a welcoming tone.” Selinger joined the premiers of Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Quebec and Saskatchewan for the three-day visit to the U.S. capital, where they met with 20 governors and several top-level figures of President Barack Obama’s administration.” Read More.

Premiers meet two key members of Obama team before governors’ gathering

2010-02-19T21:11:01-06:00

The Canadian Press, February 19, 2010 - “Seven Canadian premiers arrived in the U.S. capital on Friday to sit down for discussions with two key White House power brokers in advance of their attendance at an influential conference of American governors.
The leaders of Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island were slated to meet with President Barack Obama’s economic czar, Larry Summers, and Lisa Jackson, head of the Environmental Protection Agency.
They arrived to a city still digging out from under an uncharacteristic blanket of snow after a series of mammoth winter storms in recent weeks. “I think they could lend a bit of the snow to the Olympics in British Columbia,” New Brunswick Premier Shawn Graham joked shortly after his arrival.Graham called the premiers’ invitation to the National Governors Association meeting “historic,” while adding their conversations with key members of Obama’s team were crucial. “It’s a tremendous opportunity to reach out to two figures in the Obama administration to discuss a number of areas of mutual concern,” Graham saidTrade issues, he said, and the need to ensure the Canada-U.S. border doesn’t get any thicker, were going to be the top items of discussion with Summers. “New Brunswick is Canada’s most trade-dependent province, so these trade corridors are critical to us,” Graham said. “We’re going to express the importance of trade between our two countries.” The meeting with Jackson comes as the EPA warns it will begin to regulate carbon emissions standards in the absence of greenhouse gas legislation from Congress. That legislation is stalled after the Democrats recently lost their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate with the election of a Republican to the late Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts seat. Canadian manufacturers could suffer due to the EPA’s involvement if Washington opts to impose protectionist barriers on oil and other goods made from carbon-intensive industries north of the border.” Read More.

We need more NAFTA, not less

2010-02-17T14:48:00-06:00

Miami Herald, February 17, 2010 - “ There was no mention of the North American Free Trade Agreement in President Obama’s remarks on jobs in his State of the Union Address. But one of the best ways he could help keep and create American jobs would be to expand
NAFTA is a political piñata. The trade agreement concluded in 1993 by Canada, Mexico and the United States is widely blamed for every supposed grievance arising from globalization. Even so, if we want Americans to be able to compete—and win—in an ever-tougher global marketplace, we need more NAFTA, not less. We need NAFTA plus. Opponents of NAFTA say that, overall, it has cost Americans jobs. During his presidential campaign, Obama claimed that ``one million jobs have been lost because of NAFTA.’’
The truth is, most economists say that, on balance, NAFTA has had little or no effect on the overall number of jobs in the United States since it entered into force in 1994.What NAFTA has done is increase trade among the three NAFTA countries more than threefold since 1994—to about $900 billion annually. This has added about $60 billion annually to U.S. income—$200 in added income every year for every American. And what NAFTA has done is lay the foundation for a more efficient and more integrated North American economy that could preserve and produce jobs throughout North America that would otherwise go to China, Europe or elsewhere in a world rife with increasing regional competition. Read More.

Climate-Change Debate Is Heating Up in Deep Freeze

2010-02-11T13:53:00-06:00

The New York Times, February 11, 2010 - “As millions of people along the East Coast hole up in their snowbound homes, the two sides in the climate-change debate are seizing on the mounting drifts to bolster their arguments. Skeptics of global warming are using the record-setting snows to mock those who warn of dangerous human-driven climate change — this looks more like global cooling, they taunt. Most climate scientists respond that the ferocious storms are consistent with forecasts that a heating planet will produce more frequent and more intense weather events. But some independent climate experts say the blizzards in the Northeast no more prove that the planet is cooling than the lack of snow in Vancouver or the downpours in Southern California prove that it is warming. As an illustration of their point of view, the family of Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, a leading climate skeptic in Congress, built a six-foot-tall igloo on Capitol Hill and put a cardboard sign on top that read “Al Gore’s New Home.” Read More.

Good and Boring

2010-02-01T16:28:00-06:00

The New York Times, February 1, 2010 - “In times of crisis, good news is no news. Iceland’s meltdown made headlines; the remarkable stability of Canada’s banks, not so much. Yet as the world’s attention shifts from financial rescue to financial reform, the quiet success stories deserve at least as much attention as the spectacular failures. We need to learn from those countries that evidently did it right. And leading that list is our neighbor to the north. Right now, Canada is a very important role model. Yes, I know, Canada is supposed to be dull. The New Republic famously pronounced “Worthwhile Canadian Initiative” (from a Times Op-Ed column in the ’80s) the world’s most boring headline. But I’ve always considered Canada fascinating, precisely because it’s similar to the United States in many but not all ways. The point is that when Canadian and U.S. experience diverge, it’s a very good bet that policy differences, rather than differences in culture or economic structure, are responsible for that divergence. And anyway, when it comes to banking, boring is good. Read More.

Mexico - President Felipe Calderón Meets with Executives from Global Firms

2010-01-31T19:59:00-06:00

Israia, January 31, 2010 - “Earlier today, during the Annual Meeting 2010 of the World Economic Forum, Mexican President Felipe Calderón met with the leaders of various global firms. During these meetings, President Calderón explained the competitive advantages that make Mexico an attractive destination for productive investment and job creation. He said that after many years, Mexico is once again one of investors’ ten favorite studies, according to a recent study by AT Kearney. He invited businessmen to invest in Mexico and take advantage of its geostrategic position, which links it to the world’s largest market and the economies of Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America, as well as Mexico’s increase in competitiveness, which has yielded lower manufacturing costs than those observed in countries such as Brazil, China and India. President Calderón talked to President and Director General of Siemens AG, Peter Löscher, whom he congratulated on his firm’s decision to transfer the production of switches to Mexico, which represents an initial investment of over million dollars in addition to the creation of a thousand new jobs.” Read More.