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erpsoftwarsolution · 5 years ago

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Trade pact is not enough for López Obrador to revive economy

The US Senate’s ratification of the USMCA trade deal this month lifted four years of nerve-racking uncertainty for Mexico. A beaming President Andrés Manuel López Obrador told Mexicans to look forward tobetterpayandmoreinvestment. The leftwing leader has argued that the revamped United States-MexicoCanada Agreement will help revive an economy where investment and job creation are at their lowest in a decade, growth has plummeted to zero and consumer and business confidence are understrain. But eliminating Donald Trump’s threats to slap tariffs on Mexico or scrap the 25-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement, while necessary, are unlikely to be enough to reignite investment. The lacklustre economy is also largely due to Mr López Obrador himself,businessleadersandanalystssay. “We have seen with profound concern how the perception of uncertainty and hostility to private investment has increased,” Claudia Jañez, president of the Executive Council of Global Companies, told journalists on the eve of the Senate vote. “It is taking a great deal of work to convince our headquarters to invest in Mexico,” added the Latin AmericanchiefofDuPont,theUSchemicalsgroup. Ms Jañez’s remarks were notable because business leaders have generally bent over backwards to placate a politician many of them openly distrusted beforehislandslidewinin2018. “USMCA isn’t the only thing Mexico has to do to recover investment,” said Beatriz Leycegui, a former foreign trade under-secretary. “The government needs to send other types of messages — certainty over public policies, respect fortheruleoflawandcontracts.” Ms Leycegui added: “USMCA is without a doubt very important but what could have more impact is creating a more propitious environment for investmenttoflow.” Mr López Obrador, a nationalist, has clashed repeatedly with businesses — despite his insistence that he respects andneedsprivateinvestment. He scrapped the $13bn Norman Foster-designed Mexico City airport project, one-third built, shortly before taking office — a move analysts said was designed to send the unequivocal signal that“I’mthebossnow”. He has reversed some of his predecessor’s signature reforms, including halting energy auctions, and last year forced a renegotiation of contracts with international gas pipeline companies, the costsofwhichhedeemedexorbitant. CFE, the struggling state-run power utility, is now preparing steps that could dismantle private participation in the electricity market and curb renewable energyprojects. To the delight of the business community, Arturo Herrera, finance minister, told the Financial Times in March that a lack of cash would delay the president’s pet project, an $8bn refinery in his home state of Tabasco. But the Mexican president publicly contradicted him the nextday. Stop-and-start decisions and contradictions abound in a government in which market-friendly personalities such as Mr Herrera and Alfonso Romo, chief of staff, are often overruled by radical ideologues such as Rocío Nahle, the energy minister, or Manuel Bartlett, CFE chief executive, who styles himself asan“ultra-nationalist”. “The problem right now is, what are the rules?” said the head of one Canadian company investing in Mexico. “A few years ago, with the reforms, there wassomekindofpathforopportunities. Now we’re not sure what the opportunitiesare.” With some analysts forecasting the economy may not even grow 1 per cent this year despite growth in the US — which, thanks to Nafta, is its partner in supply chains in cars and electronics — Mr López Obrador should be changing tack.Butheappearsunlikelyto. With approval ratings of more than 70 per cent, he sees nothing broken that needsfixing. “I don’t see how we can move forward under this model,” the Canadian chief executive said. “We need a crisis . . . This government isn’t doing anything to entice investment. All they’re goodatiscancellingstuff.

President Martín Vizcarra’s anti-corruption campaignwas givena potential boost after Peru’s main opposition party suffered a heavy defeat in Sunday's congressionalelection. Mr Vizcarra shut down congress in September after lawmakers repeatedly obstructed his campaign to curb parliamentary privilege and clean up public office. Opposition lawmakers decried the move as “a coup” and branded the president a dictator. But polls suggested the vast majority of Peruvians — fed up with congress’s bickering, corruption and intransigence — welcomed the decision. For the four months since the shutdown,MrVizcarrahasruledbydecree. According to provisional results, 10 parties won seats in the 130-seat chamber with no one party getting more than 11 per cent of the vote. The big loser was the rightwing Popular Force (FP) party led by former presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori. It took less than 7 per cent of the vote and looked set to win about 12 seats, down from 73 at the last congressionalelectionin2016. Ms Fujimori’s party used its parliamentary clout to bring down the previous president in 2018 and make life difficult for Mr Vizcarra. With its power now curbed, the president may be able to press ahead with his reform programme, although — with no political party of his own — he will still need to forgealliances. Part of the president’s mooted reforms include scrapping parliamentary immunity for lawmakers so that they can be brought before judges more easilyifaccusedofcrimes. “It’s an even more fragmented congress than we expected,” said Arturo Maldonado, a political analyst at the Pontifical Catholic University in Lima. “There is a clear loser — Fujimori’s movement — but there are no clear winners. “Perhaps the biggest winner is not a party but an idea: the idea that shutting down the previous congress was good forthecountry.” Peru goes to the polls in April 2021 to choose a new parliament and president, meaning neither Mr Vizcarra nor the lawmakers elected on Sunday will have muchtimetoachievetheirgoals.

yesterday evening, at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, Bethany Williams picked up a £10,000 prize at theArtsFoundationFutures Awards. For a 30-year-old, who until 14 months ago was working full time in a pub to enable her projects to happen at all,thefundsmustbewelcome. The Arts Foundation honours a diverse range of artistic practice every January,thisyearincludingcomicbooks and experimental film-making. Williams’s award was for “Social Innovation: the material evolution”, a section focused on artists and designers whose work prioritises social design and the responsibledevelopmentofmaterials. It’s not as niche as it sounds. More than ever, young designers are looking at ways to combine environmental and social concerns. In Williams’s case, though, the outcome is more conspicuous than most: her high-end unisex streetwear has been shown on the catwalk since last January as part of the British Fashion Council’s official LondonMenswearschedule. Williams’s sharp and colourful garments are sold at the chicest of stores, including Browns in London and Galeries Lafayette in Paris, but they have inspired roots: made from the linings of bell tents discarded at a glamping site outside Bristol, or remaindered ribbon from a Midlands toy factory, sewn by women at Downview Prison in Brixton or at a rehab centre near Italy’s Adriatic coast. She visited the latter not long ago. “The assistant, who’s been selling my work since the first collection in 2017, said that people love it because it’s so bright,” she says. “Serena Williams had bought some. And the King of Morocco. Hebuysawovencoateveryseason.” Perhapsheknowsit’sbeenmadefrom books abandoned by the publishing house Hachette, and that 20 per cent of profits go back to the charity Bethany Williams has worked with. But for Williams, there’s nothing wrong with activism by stealth. “I quite like the idea that someone is contributing to women’s rehabilitation without knowing it,” she says. “But for me fashion has the ability to amplify ideas, because it has such a massive reach; everyone wears clothes. I love making, and I love textiles and taking something discarded and giving it time and love and making something new. But equally I am really invested in thesocialsideofmywork.” Williams begins each collection by finding an enterprise which agrees to work with her. For her autumn/winter 2019collection,itwasAdelaideHouse,a shelter in Liverpool for women leaving prison, where the 20 residents became part of the production process, and abstract versions of their faces were embroidered into reclaimed denim for thefinalgarments. The pieces she sent down the runway on January 4 this year, in a packed east London warehouse, reflect time spent with the Magpie Trust in Newham, where women with children under five aregiventemporaryaccommodation. “They are vulnerable people,” she says. “It is a way to bring knitting and sewing skills, and confidence, and I learn a lot from them too,” she says. She has cast models from TIH (There is Hope), an organisation that improves theprospectsofhomelesspeople.

Williams grew up on the Isle of Man with her mother, a pattern cutter, and her grandparents. “I was brought up to be socially and environmentally conscious,” she says. “The Isle of Man is a tiny community, we eat locally from small farms. It’s way of life that’s always made sense to me.” At Brighton Universityshestudiedfineartasacriticalpractice, “which was hard for me as I’m very dyslexic and I have to read something two or three times for it to go in,” she says.“Butitintroducedmetoartistslike the Copenhagen collective Superflex who intercept company systems and divert profits for good, to positive effect. It made me realise I wanted to create my own system where my passion lies — intextiles.” At the London College of Fashion, on the menswear MA course, she joined its Making for Change programme, which trains women in Downview Prison for jobs in the garment industry. (She has since hired a sample machinist from there.) She also researched numbers of