Mexico will challenge the United States’ metal tariffs at the World Trade Organization (WTO) on the grounds that they violate international trade rules, the government said today.
“In response to the measures the United States applied to Mexican steel and aluminum exports, Mexico announces that it will initiate a dispute settlement process under the World Trade Organization,” the Secretariat of Economy (SE) said in a statement.
The U.S. government imposed the respective 25% and 10% duties on Mexican, Canadian and European Union steel and aluminum from June 1 on national security grounds, although in the case of its North American neighbors United States Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the decision was based on a lack of progress in NAFTA talks.
The SE statement said “Mexico considers that the measures imposed by the US under section 232 of its legislation, arguing threats to its national security, violate the WTO’s Agreement on Safeguards by not having been adopted in accordance with the provided procedures.”
The tariffs also violate the 1994 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, it added.
The announcement that Mexico will seek the intervention of the WTO in the dispute follows the government’s swift response last Thursday that it would “impose equivalent measures” on its northern neighbor.
The retaliatory tariffs target products from exporters in states that are politically important to United States President Donald Trump and include steel flats, pork and a variety of fruits and cheeses.
Today’s statement said that the Mexican government’s actions will continue to comply with the rules of international trade law and “will be proportional to the damage that Mexico unfortunately receives.”
Both Canada and the European Union have already filed challenges against the tariffs with the WTO.
Averages in a collation of recent opinion polls. oraculus/el país
There is a 92% probability that leading presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador will win the July 1 election, according to an electoral model developed by the newspaper El País.
The prediction is based on a simulation of 20,000 elections in which the four candidates face off against each other and takes into account a collation of opinion poll results.
The model indicates that there is a 7% probability that right-left coalition candidate Ricardo Anaya will triumph and just a 1% chance that the ruling party candidate, José Antonio Meade, will become Mexico’s next president.
The newspaper said the model has a 3.5% margin of error for each candidate.
Based on 16 surveys collated by El País, the Morena party leader widely known as AMLO has an average of 48.2% voter support, while the For Mexico in Front candidate, Anaya, has 27.5% backing.
Meade is in third place with 19.5% support and an average of 2% of those polled said they would vote for independent Jaime “El Bronco” Rodríguez.
In Bloomberg’s May 30 poll tracker — which also collates surveys — López Obrador’s advantage over Anaya is even larger at 27 points, while the latest poll by the newspaper Reforma, published last week, showed a similar result, with AMLO outpolling his nearest rival by a rate of two to one.
In predicting a likely victory by the Together We Will Make History candidate, El País noted that an electoral upset in which the frontrunner gave up a 20-point advantage would not be “normal.”
López Obrador losing the election from his current position would be rarer than Portuguese soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo missing a penalty kick, the newspaper said.
It also pointed out that AMLO didn’t drop in the polls after either of the two presidential debates despite such forums not being the third-time candidate’s strongest suit.
The four most recent surveys included in the newspaper’s average — Parametria, Reforma, Ipsos and Demotecnia — all showed the frontrunner with more than 50% support.
However, a López Obrador victory is not an out-and-out certainty because “the polls could still move and up to the final day there will be room for a surprise,” El País said.
On the other hand, support for the former Mexico City mayor has consistently trended upwards and his probability of winning has increased by 13 points compared to the newspaper’s March 31 prediction when it said he had a 79% chance of electoral success.
Meade, who is heading a coalition led by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), has struggled to throw off the shackles of being associated with a government that has been plagued by corruption scandals and is led by a deeply unpopular president.
The recent Reforma poll showed that just 20% of respondents approved of Enrique Peña Nieto’s performance.
Meade served as a secretary in three different cabinet posts during the current administration, most recently as secretary of finance.
A strong performance in the second debate in Tijuana two weeks ago failed to lift him out of the doldrums of third place in most polls.
After making up some ground on López Obrador in the previous Reforma poll, Anaya ceded his gain by losing four points in last week’s Reforma poll while AMLO gained four.
Both he and Meade have charged that the election result is not a foregone conclusion because of the number of voters who have indicated that they haven’t yet decided who they will vote for on July 1.
But El País said that abstention rates are high among undecided voters, meaning that the possibility of that cohort harming López Obrador’s chances are less than polls may suggest.
One factor in Anaya’s favor, however, is the support of the business elite, which has largely thrown its support behind the former National Action Party (PAN) president.
Several large businesses, including two that are directed and owned by Mexico’s second and third richest men, have also warned their employees against voting for the leftist frontrunner.
There is also the so-called voto útil — or strategic vote — factor that some analysts believe will boost Anaya’s support because those who would otherwise support Meade may choose to vote for the second-place candidate because they consider him the only candidate capable of defeating López Obrador.
But El País cited a poll by Demotecnia that showed that in a head-to-head contest between Anaya and AMLO, Meade’s votes were shared almost equally between the two candidates.
“In other words, there is a part of the PRI who feels more comfortable with a López Obrador victory than a triumph by the ex-president of the PAN,” the newspaper said.
The Grand Warlock: the cards say Anaya.
A large voto útil for Anaya, considering current poll figures, wouldn’t be enough to ensure his victory in any case, El País said.
With that in mind, the prediction by a warlock may be cold comfort for the youngest candidate in the field.
Enrique Marthé Bertón, the Brujo Mayor, or the Grand Warlock, has predicted that Anaya will prevail on July 1. He cited a previous correct prediction — that former Veracruz governor Javier Duarte would be arrested — as evidence that his latest prophecy is foolproof.
A drought and water pollution are both possible reasons for the deaths of eight manatees last month in Tabasco.
Although the cause of the deaths in the El Maluco lagoon in the municipality of Centro is not clear, environmentalists and fishermen blame low water levels and pollution, conditions that remain a threat to the remaining animals.
” . . . We’ve notified the authorities but they don’t do anything, they just come to bury the animals and go away,” said Denis Muñoz Potenciano, a fisherman from the nearby town of El Venadito in Macuspana.
He explained that manatees were numerous in the lagoon in the past and were a tourist attraction, but now only about 10 animals remain.
Muñoz said drought has caused some sections of the lagoon to become stagnant, leaving fish without oxygen and causing mass die-offs.
Officials from the environmental protection agency Profepa have only recently started taking water samples from the lagoon, but their study and analysis takes about 10 days, and locals fear that by then more manatees will be found dead.
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A decade ago, Tabasco had the largest manatee population in the country. Profepa data has revealed that numbers have declined since then by about 60% due to pollution and hunting.
Manatees have been considered an endangered species by the Mexican government since 2010, and their future in Tabasco is not promising. There are only three facilities where the mammals are kept in captivity, and their protection in the wild is almost non-existent, according to experts.
A demonstration by relatives displaying photos of missing family members.
There are now 37,435 missing persons in Mexico, according to the Interior Secretariat (Segob), 40% more than the number reported in 2014.
Investigations for the vast majority of cases (36,265) are considered the responsibility of state authorities and of that figure, just five states account for more than half of all disappearances.
Tamaulipas is the worst affected, with almost 6,000 unsolved missing persons cases, followed by the state of México with 3,890, Jalisco with 3,362, Sinaloa with 3,027 and Nuevo León 2,895.
The statistics were compiled by the National Public Security System (SNSP) — an administrative organ of Segob — and include cases still unresolved as of April 30.
The figure is just over 15,000 higher than the 22,322 missing persons that federal officials reported in August 2014 and almost 4,000 more than the number of cases reported in June last year.
At the end of 2017, the official National Register of Disappeared and Missing Persons indicated that the fate or whereabouts of 33,482 people remained unknown.
But an international human rights group suspects the numbers are in fact higher.
Amnesty International said in January that “the actual numbers are probably higher because the official figures exclude federal cases that occurred before 2014 and cases classified as other criminal offenses such as hostage-taking or human trafficking.”
It also said that “investigations into cases of missing persons continue to be flawed and authorities generally fail to immediately initiate searches for the victims.”
Cases under investigation by federal authorities have also risen during recent years to the current figure of 1,170, with just three states accounting for 60% of the total.
Guerrero has the highest number of unresolved investigations, with 325, including the 43 teaching students from Ayotzinapa who disappeared in the city of Iguala on September 26, 2014.
Veracruz has the second highest number of cases under investigation by the federal Attorney General’s office (PGR), with 207, followed by Tamaulipas, with 141.
Security forces operating in all three states have been suspected of perpetrating enforced disappearances.
An investigation by Amnesty International determined that police in Chilpancingo forcibly disappeared five young men in the last week of December.
Journalists, activists, international experts, victims’ relatives and members of the general public have also questioned the role of the army in the disappearance of the 43 students.
In Veracruz, the state government has formally accused four high-ranking former security officials and 15 police officers of the forced disappearances of 15 people during the administration of ex-governor Javier Duarte.
More recently, the United Nations (UN) said last month that there are “strong indications” that federal security forces were responsible for the disappearance of 23 people, including at least five minors, in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, between February and March this year.
Victims’ family members have claimed that the navy was involved. The day after the UN released its report, the PGR announced it would investigate the disappearances.
Of the total number of missing persons, statistics show that six out of every 10 disappeared persons are aged between 15 and 39.
The highest number of missing persons cases corresponds to the 15-19 age bracket, followed by 25-29 and 20-24. Together they account for 14,649 cases or 39% of the total.
There are also 530 missing children aged up to four years, just over 500 missing five to nine-year-olds and almost 2,000 disappeared persons aged between 10 and 14.
Around three-quarters of the missing persons are male and most cases correspond to Mexican nationals, but there are also 384 missing foreigners and a further 2,056 cases where the origin of the disappeared person is not specified.
The number of missing persons has continued to rise this year despite President Enrique Peña Nieto promulgating the General Law on Forced Disappearances in November.
The law was designed to better fund and improve search efforts for the thousands of people across Mexico who have been reported as missing or forcibly disappeared and was backed by an initial 500-million-peso budget (US $25 million at today’s exchange rate).
A new security force has started operating in Juchitán, Oaxaca, as a pilot program after the murder of an election candidate and two others on Saturday in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec city.
Governor Alejandro Murat Hinojosa announced that the 500-member Special Security Force Oaxaca began operating yesterday in the isthmus region. It consists of personnel from the army, navy, Federal Police, the Center for Investigation and National Security, the Attorney General’s office and state officials from the Secretariat of Public Security, the Attorney General’s office and the Interior Secretariat.
The new force was created the day after Pamela Terán Pineda, a candidate for municipal council in Juchitán, was assassinated.
Federal crime data has ranked the municipality as the ninth most violent in the country.
Murat said the Special Security Force Oaxaca is a single-command force that will start operating from Juchitán but be capable of traveling to other parts of the state “to recover the peace.”
Assassination victim Terán.
The message is clear, he continued, explaining that there will be zero tolerance toward organized crime.
At least 1,000 people attended yesterday’s funeral procession for Terán, a doctor by profession, and a community activist who worked on behalf of the indigenous community and founded and directed two community organizations, Despierta Juchitán and Fundación Meraki.
Teachers are now on strike in four states and many are marching today in Mexico City, creating traffic chaos in several locations.
The week-long teachers’ strike in Oaxaca has spread to Guerrero, Michoacán and Chiapas and will continue indefinitely to press for negotiations with the federal government to terminate the 2013 education reforms.
The dissident CNTE union anticipated that 12,000 teachers would arrive in Mexico City today where it has threatened to set up a camp in the streets around La Ciudadela park in the borough of Cuauhtémoc. The CNTE set up a camp there in 2016 and remained for three months.
The teachers had planned three marches for today in the capital, all of which will converge in front of the building housing the Secretariat of the Interior. Chaotic traffic conditions were being reported in various parts of the city.
Mexico water shortages: Many turn to rain harvesting alternative
Among the teachers’ demands is the reinstatement of close to 600 of their number who were laid off when they refused to write evaluation tests. Teachers in Oaxaca have additional demands.
Wilbert Santiago Valdivieso of Oaxaca local Section 22 said that one is the release of the union’s bank accounts, which were frozen in 2015 and contained about 136 million pesos (US $8.6 million at the time).
The CNTE said 47 busloads of teachers left Oaxaca yesterday and were expected in the capital early this morning, along with others from Chiapas, Guerrero and Michoacán. But the Oaxaca caravan has been slowed by police action.
It was first halted by police last night in the city of Puebla and again early this morning in Mexico City, triggering accusations by the union that the federal government was determined to prevent the teachers’ demonstrations and strike action.
“Watch out, comrades! Total repudiation of the criminalization of protest!” Santiago said this morning on Twitter.
In Chiapas, a union spokesman said 20,000 schools were closed today by striking teachers while in Oaxaca last week’s blockades continued. Access to both the airport and the central bus station was blocked this morning.
The federal Education Secretariat warned today it would dock the pay of teachers who missed classes.
Is it possible to fight obesity by eating more tortillas? Students and faculty at the National Autonomous University of México (UNAM) think so, as long as the tortillas are the healthy ones they have developed.
Their tortillas are made from dough loaded with proteins, calcium, fiber, folic acid, probiotics and prebiotics and, their inventors say, will not only help people who are overweight but those suffering from malnutrition as well.
They claim that eating a single one of their tortillas offers the same benefits as drinking a glass of milk.
The students and academics made use of several fermenting processes that rendered lactic bacteria and several organic acids that give the tortilla another desirable characteristic: a long shelf life.
It will last for up to two months at room temperature, sealed in its original packaging, or more than three months under refrigeration, making it an ideal product to distribute in remote communities where refrigeration is not common.
The double-fermenting process of the raw tortilla dough also renders it soft and elastic. The students found that once it is cooked in the shape of a tortilla and stored for a few months, it can recover its original consistency and texture if a few drops of water are sprinkled on it before reheating.
This tortilla is also a bit sweeter in taste than its conventional counterpart, making it a tasty complement for both sweet and savory meals.
UNAM researcher Raquel Gómez Pliego is at the helm of the fortified tortilla project. She asserted that the high content of probiotics and prebiotics can aid with the discomfort caused by conditions such as diabetes mellitus, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or cancer.
The process of preparing the new fortified tortilla is currently being patented by the Mexican government.
No date has been set for the product to reach store shelves, but sooner might be better. According to the National Institute of Public Health, 70% of Mexicans are overweight and the primary cause of death is diabetes.
More infrastructure projects are on the way for Mazatlán, the governor of Sinaloa has announced.
Quirino Ordaz Coppel said this week that during the city’s recent travel trade show President Enrique Peña Nieto offered support to replace the seaside malecón’s more than 40-year-old pavement.
Speaking at a Mexican Chamber of the Construction Industry (CMIC) event, the governor explained that the 100-million-peso (US $5-million) plan would also include the repair of the esplanade’s drainage system along the entirety of its 21 kilometers.
“We have to cross our fingers and have trust and faith that this project can be completed, I’m almost certain that it will be. It’s already at the Secretariat of Finance and the president already gave his instructions . . .” Ordaz said.
In the short term, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) governor said the first lady and national president of the DIF family services agency, Angélica Rivera de Peña, will officially open a new federally-funded CREE rehabilitation center in three months.
The new Mazatlán General Hospital will also be completed by the start of next year, Ordaz said, and the wastewater treatment plant in the neighborhood of Urias will be expanded.
The latter project will allow the closure of the El Creston plant, which is located below the city’s famous lighthouse.
The governor added that the construction of a new baseball stadium in the city helped Mazatlán secure the 2020 Caribbean Series baseball tournament which will feature champion teams from Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and Mexico.
In addition, Ordaz said that 400 million pesos (US $20 million) are being spent to build the new aquarium at the city’s central park.
Finally, the governor said that construction work on the 600-million-peso Mazatlán aqueduct is continuing with a scheduled completion date of 2019. The project will guarantee the city’s water supply for the next 25 years, Ordaz said.
This year’s Tianguis Turístico was held in the Mazatlán International Center, an innovative and modern venue that was built in less than a year.
The wreckage of a bus and truck in the accident that killed 11 yesterday.
The “highway of death” in México state lived up to its name yesterday when 11 people died in a collision between a bus and a truck. Twelve people were injured.
The accident occurred about 9:45am on the Texcoco-Calpulalpan highway near Santa Inés, Tepetlaoxtoc.
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Local residents later seized four buses and used them to block the highway to demand that the bus company, Serutex, assume responsibility for the medical costs of yesterday’s victims and compensation for the families of the dead.
Residents say they warned federal transportation authorities in April that the stretch of road where yesterday’s collision occurred is dangerous and frequently the scene of accidents.
The situation has become worse in recent months, they say, because of an increase in truck traffic delivering construction materials to the site of Mexico City’s new airport.
A traffic light in Torreón, Coahuila, melts in the heat.
Parts of Mexico continue to swelter in a record-breaking, prolonged heat wave that has caused at least three deaths, given a boost to the economy and even caused traffic lights to melt in two northern states.
Authorities in Chihuahua — where temperatures have been as high as 48 C — said an 18-year-old indigenous Tarahumara man and a 17-year-old male died due to heat-related illnesses.
A 33-year-old homeless man also died in Saltillo, Coahuila, due to heatstroke.
According to the National Meteorological Service (SMN), temperatures of up to 49 are expected to continue in the north of the country until next Tuesday, June 5.
“. . . What we’re observing is that as the heat wave progresses, the high [atmospheric] pressure is not decreasing, so it’s going to strengthen in Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Léon, Durango and Zacatecas,” SMN general coordinator Alberto Hernández told a press conference.
He added that several states broke temperature records for the month of May, which in two cases go back more than 50 years.
Hidalgo exceeded its previous May record, set in 1964, Chihuahua broke its 1978 mark and Sinaloa beat the high recorded in 1961.
Zacatecas and Jalisco also topped their previous May highs, recorded in 2016 and 2013 respectively.
Mexico City also experienced high temperatures this week, although with maximums of around 32 it didn’t come close to matching the scorching conditions in other parts of the country.
That didn’t stop sales of cold beverages, ice creams, popsicles and other items popular during hot weather to spike to such an extent that one Mexico City business chamber estimated the economic spillover effect would be 260 million pesos (US $13 million).
Some record-breaking temperatures in the past.
In a statement, Canacope said the heat had led people to make unanticipated purchases that averaged 60 pesos (US $3) per person this week.
Energy consumption has also risen. It was up by an estimated 7% in the capital this week as people have switched on their fans and air conditioning systems.
While many people across the country might have felt like they were going to melt this week, traffic lights in the cities of Torreón, Coahuila, and nearby Gómez Palacio, Durango, did just that.
Temperatures that soared above 40 caused the plastic casing in which the traffic signals are set to warp, both in the downtown of the former city and on a main road in the latter, but the lights continued to function regardless.
More extreme weather could be on the way next week with the arrival of a tropical cyclone.
Civil Protection general director Ricardo de la Cruz Musalem warned that stronger hurricanes can be provoked by extended hot spells such as Mexico has experienced this week, and they may be more likely to impact Mexico’s coastlines.
The National Water Commission (Conagua) is predicting 32 tropical cyclones will affect Mexico this hurricane season, four more than the average recorded in recent years.
