Mexico’s president-elect applauds cooling of Trump’s rhetoric

MEXICO CITY — In an indication of how much U.S.Mexico relations have deteriorated, a weeks-long pause in insults from President Trump apparently counts as progress.

“I appreciate the respect that President Trump has shown us,” Mexico’s president-elect, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, said Friday in a news conference. “I am also thankful that until now he has been very prudent in referring to Mexicans and has not made offensive comments. All of this I have to recognize and appreciate.”

Lopez Obrador, who won the presidency in a landslide last month and is scheduled to take office in December, also said that progress was being made in the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the pact that Trump has repeatedly labeled a “disaster” for U.S. workers and industry.

Both countries have been trying to soothe the diplomatic discord.

Mexico’s outgoing president, Enrique Peña Nieto, twice canceled planned trips to Washington to meet Trump because of the U.S. president’s demand that Mexico pay for his administration’s planned wall on the U.S. side of the two nations’ lengthy land border.

People here of all backgrounds and political outlooks remain outraged at Trump’s characterization of Mexicans as criminals and rapists and his insistence that Mexico pay for the wall.

Many observers once predicted that Lopez Obrador’s deeply nationalist stance and outspoken support for Mexican immigrants in the United States would put him on a collision course with Trump.

Now, thanks largely to Lopez Obrador’s conciliatory tone, they are talking about a possible reset of U.S.-Mexico relations.

“We seek a very good relationship with the United States and with all the countries of the world,” Lopez Obrador said. “We think we need a good neighborhood, to achieve a relationship of respect and cooperation for progress, and until now things are going well.”