Mexican president-elect foresees good relations with Trump, U.S.
SAN LUIS RIO COLORADO, Son. – Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Friday his dealings with U.S. President Donald Trump have been respectful and that he expects to have a harmonious relationship with the United States when he takes office Dec. 1.
Keeping a promise he made in a prior visit in April, Lopez Obrador returned to San Luis Rio Colorado for a rally that brought thousands of residents together in el Bosque de la Ciudad, a public park of the city’s south side.
Lopez Obrador was accompanied by Santos Gonzalez Yescas, the border city’s new mayor, and Sonora state and federal lawmakers and two special guests from the Yuma area, Yuma Mayor Douglas Nicholls and Somerton Mayor Jose Yepez.
“I have spoken by telephone with President Trump about the Free Trade Agreement and about the immigrant issue,” Lopez Obrador said in a speech. “It is going to be a cordial relationship, but one with respect for independence
and sovereignty.”
Nicholls said he and Yepez came at the invitation of Gonzalez, who took office earlier this week after having been elected mayor as a candidate of the party formed by Lopez Obrador, the National Regeneration Movement, or MORENA.
“We have met with the mayor (Gonzalez) and spoken about different issues,” said Nicholls, “but it is great to have the presidentelect here. He is bringing attention to an area that has not had it at a national or international level for a long time. Not much attention has been given to this region, but really it deserves it.
“These communities are strong, vibrant,” Nicholls said of the San Luis Rio Colorado and its sister cities in Yuma County. “And it will help them a lot in having the attention of a leader at the national level, especially the president.”
On behalf of the mayors of the four cities in Yuma County, Nicholls and Yepez presented Lopez Obrador a document expressing their desire for bilateral collaboration in such efforts as encouraging investment in the aerospace industry in the region, upgrading ports of entry on the border between San Luis Rio Colorado and Yuma County, connecting the Mexican city and Yuma by rail link, and promoting tourism on both sides of the border.
“We wanted to reiterate that as a region and as the Yuma area, we are supporting and working with the mayor of San Luis (Rio Colorado), that we are promoting ourselves as a region,” said Yepez.
“There are people on both sides who are related to one another, so we know the needs of the area very well,” Yepez added. “We want to continue promoting ourselves as a region economically.”
Lopez Obrador is the first candidate outside of Mexico’s two traditionally dominant parties – the Institutional Revolutionary Party and the National Action Party – to be elected. Candidates from left-leaning MORENA were swept into local and state offices across Mexico in July 1 elections, in what was seen as a demonstration of widespread voter discontent with those two parties.
Arriving in San Luis Rio Colorado on Friday after a visit to Mexicali, Baja Calif., Lopez Obrador restated his proposals to spur the border economies, among them his call to reduce the tax applied to sales of goods and services on the border from 16 to 8 percent and to reduce the tax on rental property from 35 to 20 percent.
He said Mexican lawmakers at both the federal and state level are crafting legislation to implement those reductions, with the goal of having them take effect on Jan. 1.
Lopez Obrador said his economic platform also calls for raising the minimum wage in Mexican border cities, as well as stabilizing gasoline prices and utility rates paid by border residents.
He promised to reinstitute guaranteed prices for agricultural products with the goal of ensuring stable incomes for agricultural workers. And he vowed to address the concerns of commercial fishermen in El Golfo de Santa Clara about increasing restrictions of fishing in the Sea of Cortez.
Lopez Obrador said that in a recent meeting with current Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, he was able to head off a proposal by environmentalists for a total fishing ban extending from the gulf down along the Pacific Coast to the state of Nayarit.
“I made the commitment with President Pena that (given the concerns) of environmentalists, there will be responsible fishing, but that nothing will be prohibited just for the sake of prohibition. We have to make everyone aware of the need to protect the natural resources, but those resources also must be (used) for the good of the people.”
Lopez Obrador received perhaps his biggest applause when he said lawmakers within his party are already at work on legislation that would stiffen the penalty for government corruption, misuse of public funds, possession of prohibited firearms and fuel thefts.
He also called for a reduction in the president’s salary of 40 percent and reduction in salaries of any government officials that are now higher than that of the president.
Lopez Obrador also promised to make return visits to San Luis Rio Colorado every six months of his six-year term.