Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a leftist who has been also labeled a populist, has been elected President of Mexico in a landslide. This will change the dynamics in Mexico and mean Donald Trump will face an even tougher time imposing his will on Mexico. The New York Times:

Riding a wave of populist anger fueled by rampant corruption and violence, the leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected president of Mexico on Sunday, in a landslide victory that upended the nation’s political establishment and handed him a sweeping mandate to reshape the country.

Mr. López Obrador’s win puts a leftist leader at the helm of Latin America’s second-largest economy for the first time in decades, a prospect that has filled millions of Mexicans with hope — and the nation’s elites with trepidation.

The outcome represents a clear rejection of the status quo in the nation, which for the last quarter century has been defined by a centrist vision and an embrace of globalization that many Mexicans feel has not served them.

The core promises of Mr. López Obrador’s campaign — to end corruption, reduce violence and address Mexico’s endemic poverty — were immensely popular with voters, but they come with questions he and his new government may struggle to answer.

How he will pay for his ambitious slate of social programs without overspending and harming the economy? How will he rid the government of bad actors when some of those same people were a part of his campaign? Can he make a dent in the unyielding violence of the drug war, which left Mexico with more homicides last year than any time in the last two decades?

And how will Mr. López Obrador, a firebrand with a tendency to dismiss his critics in the media and elsewhere, govern?

In the end, the nation’s desire for change outweighed any of the misgivings the candidate inspired.

Newsweek:

For many, López Obrador’s candidacy has been hailed as “Mexico’s response” to Trump’s protectionist policies. While Trump’s stance on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has stagnated renegotiations with Canada and Mexico, some experts believe that AMLO could take the same draconian approach, especially since he pledged to untether Mexico from U.S. agricultural imports and promised the creation of oil refineries.

“The main threat of protectionism still comes from the United States,” O’Neil said. “AMLO’s government may help some of his supporters and constituencies through subsidies and protections. He has talked of promoting both food and energy sufficiency through supports for small farmers and by building refineries in Mexico. This could affect U.S. agriculture and southern U.S. refineries.”

Others argue that Mexico’s president-elect must take a different take on NAFTA negotiations. “We must forge meetings with U.S. business people who benefit from this treaty, mainly farmers and those who work in the automotive industry, that way they can pressure the president and members of Congress to ratify NAFTA,” Angel Ávila, spokesperson for Anaya’s For Mexico to the Front coalition, told Newsweek. “It’ll be a disaster for Mexico and the U.S. if there is no solution because many jobs would be at stake.”

Despite these differences, AMLO very much resembles Trump’s personality.

“It’s important to recognize him as an economic nationalist, and it that sense, there is a great deal that he has in common with Donald Trump,” Wood said. “AMLO talks about producing food, gasoline and automobiles in Mexico. He wants to bring much more production back to Mexico, which is very similar to Donald Trump’s rhetoric. He has been criticized for having authoritarian tendencies he doesn’t like people to disagree with him, so that’s another thing he has in common with Donald Trump.”

When it comes to immigration, AMLO and the rest of the candidates had also criticized Trump’s handling of militarization across the border in April. López Obrador said that the president “is using this campaign as propaganda against Mexico..he says that there is a threat alongside the U.S.-Mexico border, but there is no such threat.”

The Mexican president-elect also condemned Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy that had separated migrant children from families, and has called the president “oppressive, racist and inhumane.” AMLO has pledged to stand up to any “repressive” immigration policies from the White House if he’s elected president of Mexico. “With the triumph of our movement, we’ll defend migrants from Central America, Mexico and from all over the continent … it’s a human right we will champion,” he told a crowd in the Culiacán state this month.

However, little may change between the two countries.

Politico:

Mexicans on Sunday appear likely to elect a left-wing populist president who has campaigned on standing up to President Donald Trump, potentially ushering in a more confrontational era of U.S.-Mexico relations on everything from immigration policy to trade.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a former mayor of Mexico City who styles himself as a champion for rural Mexico, has enjoyed a double-digit lead over the other top candidates from the country’s major parties for months.

His vows to eradicate violence and official corruption — long unaddressed by outgoing Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto’s ruling PRI party — have played a major role in lifting him to the head of the pack. But his pledge to defend Mexicans from Trump, coupled with his nationalistic rhetoric, has also bolstered his standing with Mexican voters.

López Obrador traveled through the U.S. after Trump was elected to advocate for Mexican immigrants living in the states and even published a book called “Oye, Trump” (“Listen Up, Trump”) that condemns Trump’s plans to build a border wall and “his attempts to persecute migrant workers.”

Mexico “will never be the piñata of any foreign government,” López Obrador, 64, told more than 90,000 supporters at a rally here to close out his campaign on Wednesday.

The election of López Obrador — like Trump, known for his impulsive and nationalistic tendencies — could further strain U.S-Mexico relations. The candidate, nicknamed AMLO, says illegal migration to the U.S. should be addressed with economic development programs, not a border wall. And while he supports continued talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, he’s also been a critic of free trade in the past, arguing that Mexico needs to be more self-sufficient.

“AMLO won’t hold back the way Peña Nieto has,” said Mark Feierstein, former senior director for western hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council. “Peña Nieto has been very passive toward Trump and toward the United States.”

JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.

themoderatevoice.com/