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The 63-year-old is within the thick of a three-way race with different members of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s internal circle, together with Mexico Metropolis Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum and Inside Minister Adán Augusto López.
López Obrador’s Morena get together, which he created as a automobile to safe the presidency, stays an extension of the extremely common chief, so his phrases, actions and even physique language are being intently watched for indicators of a favourite.
Among the many hurdles Ebrard should overcome are a notion he doesn’t join with the get together’s base just like the folksy López Obrador, and criticism that the U.S. authorities imposed its immigration coverage on Mexico, making it do its soiled work on Ebrard’s watch.
Ebrard has responded with humorous TikTok movies aimed toward connecting with voters, together with one among himself in a designer go well with consuming tacos at a avenue stand along with his spouse or turning a stumble right into a repeatedly performed dance transfer to a Dangerous Bunny music. He not too long ago revealed an autobiography that frames his immigration negotiations with the Trump administration as a diplomatic victory as a result of Mexico prevented threatened tariffs — and it may have been worse.
In an interview with the AP, Ebrard described himself as a nationalist and a progressive who guarantees to take care of López Obrador’s signature social applications “to create a society the place inequality is shrinking.”
In an administration that insists serving to the poor is the precedence — about 40% of Mexicans stay in poverty — Ebrard says his goal as president can be to develop the comparatively small center class, if he wins the ruling get together nomination later this yr.
He has extra middle-class assist than different main contenders, consultants say, however swaying the get together’s low-income base — the voters most enamored of López Obrador — could possibly be the deciding issue. Ebrard insists he has that assist.
Ebrard narrowly misplaced his first try and be the left’s presidential candidate to López Obrador in 2012. Earlier than that he had varied roles in López Obrador’s Mexico Metropolis mayoral administration and later grew to become mayor himself in 2006.
Whereas some peg Ebrard as a centrist, he factors to passage of legalized abortion and same-sex marriage whereas he was Mexico Metropolis mayor a decade in the past as proof of his assist for progressive insurance policies.
Nonetheless, there are doubts concerning the extent to which his achievements as the highest diplomat for a president who prioritized all issues home will likely be current in voters’ minds.
Ebrard led Mexico’s effort to acquire COVID-19 vaccines, working with vaccine producers and pushing multilateral initiatives, however Mexican governors and mayors like Sheinbaum had been those current when the vaccines got out.
“Mexicans aren’t desirous about overseas coverage past when it has to do with the US and goes to impression the value of the greenback,” mentioned Ana Vanessa Cárdenas, a Mexican worldwide analyst now with Finis Terrae College in Chile.
On the nation’s pervasive violence — Mexicans’ prime precedence in line with polls — Ebrard has led to this point unsuccessful efforts to sue U.S. gun producers and gun outlets for supplying weapons smuggled into Mexico. However as president, like López Obrador, Ebrard says he would depend on the military-controlled Nationwide Guard to safe communities slightly than rebuilding civilian police capability.
Throughout Ebrard’s tenure, Mexico efficiently negotiated a brand new commerce framework with the US and Canada to switch the outdated North American Free Commerce Settlement. The brand new accord is important to his pledge to double Mexico’s annual financial progress if he’s elected president in June subsequent yr.
Mexico’s proximity to the US is its best benefit because the world emerges from the availability chain interruptions attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic, Ebrard advised the AP. Factories and meeting crops are already starting to maneuver from China to Mexico to be nearer to the U.S. market, he mentioned.
However that lengthy shared border with the US has additionally created a few of Ebrard’s best challenges.
Shortly after López Obrador took workplace in December 2018, the Trump administration carried out the so-called “Stay in Mexico” program that compelled asylum seekers to attend out their U.S. asylum requests in Mexico. Asylum seekers had been concentrated in northern border cities largely managed by organized crime, exposing the migrants to countless kidnappings.
In Could 2019, Trump threatened crippling tariffs on all Mexican imports if Mexico’s authorities didn’t sluggish the stream of migrants to the U.S. border.
Ebrard instantly flew to Washington, heading off the tariffs and what he mentioned was the Trump administration’s actual purpose: a protected third-country settlement. Below such a deal, any asylum seekers crossing Mexico would first must request asylum there slightly than within the U.S.
As an alternative, Mexico supplied to deploy its newly created Nationwide Guard in a method to comprise migrants in southern Mexico, removed from the U.S. border.
The variety of migrants intercepted on the U.S. border dropped within the quick time period, however Mexico confronted criticism from inside and overseas that it had allowed the U.S. authorities to export its immigration coverage south.
“The USA gained the battle” over immigration coverage, mentioned Silvia Núñez García, a researcher specializing within the bilateral relationship at Mexico’s Nationwide Autonomous College. The tariff menace “was when Mexico determined to just accept and handle these irregular migrant flows inside our territory.”
Ebrard mentioned the U.S. returning asylum seekers to Mexico below a COVID-19 well being rule often known as Title 42, set to run out Could 11, was a unilateral transfer that Mexico has by no means authorised.
It leaves Mexico two choices: deport the returnees to their international locations or allow them to enter Mexico, he advised the AP. “We often do the second and the U.S. is aware of it.”
The Biden administration scrapped Stay in Mexico, however in February introduced that it could usually deny asylum to migrants who present up on the U.S. border with out first searching for safety in a rustic they handed by way of — a coverage critics say is totally different in name-only from the protected third nation settlement.
If Ebrard “hasn’t been capable of stand out in overseas coverage, which has been his portfolio, then I don’t suppose his prospects are very favorable,” mentioned Núñez, noting that López Obrador’s disinterest in overseas affairs restricted Ebrard’s room to maneuver.
Martha Bárcena, a profession diplomat who served as Mexico’s ambassador to the U.S. throughout the first two years of López Obrador’s presidency, overlapping with Trump, believes Ebrard’s precedence was not overseas coverage both.
“He’s a politician and the one factor he has actually dreamed of all his life is to turn out to be president,” she mentioned. “There have been many areas by which he may have been rather more artistic and superior an agenda that was much more linked to the priorities of the Mexican authorities, which was to struggle poverty, to struggle inequality.”
Ebrard has accused Bárcena of “obsessive rancor” since she left the publish. He says that he’ll struggle poverty and inequality if he’s elected president.
“For any leftist authorities, your goal must be that the center class is almost all of the inhabitants,” Ebrard mentioned. “In 10 years we’d like poverty to be a lot lower than it’s at this time. … If not, what can be the purpose of every part we’re doing?”
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