(Expansion) – Now yes, we are summoned. In 30 days, Mexico will have to set a date, time and place to sit down and talk with its North American neighbors about their differences. Faced with this ultimatum, our president has said “how scary, how scary.” His inexplicable and extreme recklessness could have very serious implications for how we live together on the top floor of the continent.
When your neighbor has repeatedly told you to “shut up your dog,” the best thing you can do for the common good is to train him to shut his mouth. Otherwise, someone could mercilessly poison the dog or at least sue those who unfortunately live with it.
Do you know? The neighbors also have a dog, well trained. And a dog that barks does bite. And now is the third time that we have been warned and with a certain date to comply. It is our opportunity so that the law of the treaties does not drag Mexico with a necklace of nails towards a trilateral panel from which we will not be able to escape or win.
Now is the time to respond to the invitation to reconsider and obey the rules. Unfortunately, for López Obrador and his energetic pack, following the rules is humiliating; it is an act of submission and subjection to a strange enemy power.
Thus, a defiant act, such as the approval of the reforms to the Law of the Electricity Industry, goes against what we agreed in the T-MEC. In the latter, we committed to giving the companies of our trading partners “national treatment,” when the exact opposite has been the case. A very sad consolation is that not even Mexican companies are treated like Pemex and CFE.
The remedy to heal the bites of this Law would have been in the hands of the Supreme Court but they denied it by dismissing the action of unconstitutionality filed by the Senate. So one of the legacies of this Last Court will have been to leave us in force a law by which they could bleed our public finances by charging us colossal compensation.
Our misfortune, however, not only comes from the monstrosities of the Legislative Palace and the Court that, in their dismantling, left alive, kicking and biting articles of a Law that violate the T-MEC. They have also added to the discord, the apathy, indifference and cynicism of hundreds of entrenched bureaucrats after thousands of procedures stopped at their desks.
True, just as the LIE got out of hand for the ministers, these dysfunctionals have them tied up. The Chief of Chiefs prefers to keep them entertained with the raffle of the beast rather than having them issue permits for electricity generation, imports and exports of electricity and fuels, storage of petroleum products, and the construction and operation of service stations.
This bureaucratic obstruction, in the understanding of the United States government, violates the principles of impartiality and undue non-discrimination. Also, the detention of import and export permits damages free trade.
Another unfortunate act was the recent “instruction” from the Energy Secretariat to the CRE and the National Center for Natural Gas Control (CENAGAS) to prevent the use of transportation pipelines by those who did not obtain their molecule from Pemex and/or CFE. . That, here and in many places (doubtfully in China) is called “tied selling.” It is a crassly anti-competitive practice and, according to the letter from the United States, it is an affront to the T-MEC for inhibiting the free importation of North American gas.
In short, the Mexican government has 30 days to formally set an appointment to fully and seriously resolve all these ailments. Otherwise, the United States and Canada will take us to a panel which lasts around 12 forced months and whose outcome will not favor us, to put it nicely.
If we are frank, let us recognize that the collection of stratospheric compensation awaits us, which, if not satisfied, will have to be paid with the loss of benefits as signatories of the T-MEC. Here comes the dog that will dance with our suffering and money. Spooky! Spooky!
Editor’s note: Miriam Grunstein is a professor and researcher at the Universidad ORT México and is an academic associate at the Mexico Center at Rice University. She has also been an external professor at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching and coordinator of the Training Program for the Federal Government on Hydrocarbons at the University of Texas at Austin. Today she is a founding member of and runs the Energeeks blog. Follow her on . The opinions published in this column belong exclusively to the author.
