THE TTALK QUOTES


On Global Trade & Investment
Published Three Times a Week (with occasional bonus quotes) by
The Global Business Dialogue, Inc.
Washington, DC  Tel: 202-559-9316
No.20 of 2020
MONDAY, MARCH 23, 2020

Click HERE for Saturday's quote on chickens and a U.S.-UK FTA.
NORTH AMERICA AND THE CORONAVIRUS - PART I, MEXICO

 "[T]he U.S. has reached agreements with both Canada and Mexico to limit all non-essential travel across borders."

U.S. Department of Homeland Security
March 23, 2020
CONTEXT
This is from a press release/fact sheet issued earlier today by the Department of Homeland Security, DHS. In effect, it restates the decisions announced last week to close America’s borders with Canada and Mexico to non-essential traffic. In all of the statements we have seen, the U.S. Government has taken pains to underscore that normal commercial activity – from the operation of supply chains to routine imports and exports – are considered essential and should not be affected. As the fact sheet explains, “these measures will be implemented on March 21 [are in effect] and will be in place for 30 days,” at which time they will be reviewed by the parties.

First, Mexico.  Although today’s quote is about America’s borders with both Canada and Mexico, the fact sheet addresses two separate U.S. understandings, one with Mexico and one with Canada. Here in the TTQ Quotes we will deal with them separately, starting today with a short discussion of the situation in Mexico and continuing later this week with a note on developments in Canada.

To date at least, Mexico has had relatively few reported cases: only 316 or just over 2 per million inhabitants . Italy is the outlier, of course, with an astounding 1,057 cases per million people, and America is just below that with a worrying 127 per million. But here is the question: Is Mexico fortunately sitting in the relative comfort of a relatively low infection rate? Or is it rather sitting on the time bomb of an undiagnosed disaster? There is no need to scour the world for perspectives, Mexico itself encompasses the full range.

Some actions to limit gatherings and increase “social distancing” are in evidence in Mexico City and elsewhere, but on the national scale, President López Obrador has refrained from restrictions on travel etc. that are in place elsewhere. And he has continued his own public events complete with hugs and kisses for his followers. A reporter whose question implicitly criticized the president’s very personal style got this bit of blowback from Mexico’s Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell:

“The force of the president is moral, it is not a force for contagion.”
COMMENT
On the strength of that comment at least, the Deputy Health Minister is more likely to be remembered for his passion than for persuasion. That said, the jury is still out – and here we are speaking only about Mexico – on the question of whether maybe, just maybe, this is in an instance where less is more. Or, alternatively, that Mexico cannot afford to wait another day before doing everything it can to contain the threat of Covid-19. 

We have no view on that question. We would note, however, that today’s Reuters article “From Swine Flu Hub” is an excellent starting point for thinking about just those questions. The headline is a reference to the fact that Mexico did pull out all the stops in confronting the swine flu virus there back in 2009. And it worked, but the economic costs were very high. That memory lingers and has convinced some in Mexico that there are dangers in acting too quickly. 

On the other side of the ledger, the same article quotes a scientist, Rosa Maria del Angel, at Mexico’s National Polytechnic Institute.  “I am worried,” Ms. del Angel said, “that we end up in a situation like Italy, where measures weren’t taken on time, and the number of cases started to get away from them.”  Her worries are presumably well informed. Rosa Maria del Angel heads the Institute’s Department of Infectomics and Molecular Pathogenesis. The concern she expressed is magnified by the worry that Mexico’s apparently low infection rate may say more about testing in Mexico than about the spread of the virus there. 

***

As we understand the terminology, those are the kinds of questions that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld would call “known unknowns.” We shall end this short entry with a known known. It is one with which we strongly agree, and it is this from the March 20 Joint U.S.-Mexico statement on combating the COVID-19 Pandemic:

The U.S. and Mexican governments further recognize [that] critical services such as food, fuel, healthcare and life-saving medicines must reach people on both sides of the border every day. Essential travel must therefore continue unimpeded during this time.

And trade and commerce are essential.

SOURCES & LINKS
A DHS Press Release takes you to the Fact Sheet published today by the Department of Homeland Security that was the source for today’s featured quote.

JOINT STATEMENT, MEXICO is the text of the U.S.-Mexico Joint Statement on Combating the COVID-19 Virus that was issued on March 20.

JOINT STATEMENT, CANADA is the text of the U.S.-Canada Joint Statement on Combating the COVID-19 Virus that was issued on March 20.

Mexico’s Low Virus Count is a Bloomberg story on the link between testing and confirmed Covid-19 cases in Mexico.

AMLO, a Moral Force takes you to March 17 report in Mexico News Daily with the above quote from Mexico’s Deputy Health Minister.

Mexican Concerns, Medical and Economic is the Reuters are article on these different Mexican perspectives referenced in the Comment Section above.

WorldOmeter is a link to a daily running total of Covid-19 cases by country.

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