LatinNews Daily - 12 May 2017

* Mexico’s economy minister, Ildefonso Guardado, insisted on 11 May that the way to measure the strength of trade relations was not through deficits. Addressing the Mexico Business Forum 2017 in Mexico City, Guardado also stressed that Mexico would use an upcoming visit by Mexican officials to China to show that the country was not entirely dependent on the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). “We will use [the visit to China] geopolitically as strategic leverage,” Guardado said. “It sends the signal that we have alternatives.”
    US President Donald Trump issued an executive order on 31 March to review the US trade deficit. Last week saw the publication of figures showing that the US trade deficit with Mexico climbed to a near 10-year high in March of US$7.03bn, a 30% increase on the same month a year earlier. When asked about what would constitute a “fair Nafta”, in an interview with The Economist published on 11 May, Trump said that “at some point [we] would like to get it [the trade deficit] at zero, where sometimes we can be up and sometimes they can be up”.

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