Mexico greets Richardson, doubts NAFTA reopening

MARK STEVENSON | The Associated Press

12/5/2008 - 12/5/08

CHOLULA, Mexico — President-elect Barack Obama's pick for commerce secretary, Bill Richardson, got a warm welcome during a visit to Mexico, where government officials said they doubted Obama would follow through on a campaign pledge to re-negotiate NAFTA.

The New Mexico governor met Thursday with businessmen at the private University of the Americas in Cholula, a town just east of Mexico City, a day after Obama nominated him for the Cabinet post.

A businessman in the crowd called for a round of applause for Richardson's Cabinet selection. Former Mexican Foreign Relations Secretary Ernesto Derbez — who accompanied Richardson — joked of the timing of the visit: "We had it planned."

"It's great to be back in Mexico, great to be at this great university which I've had a long association with," said Richardson, who grew up in Mexico.

Derbez deflected questions directed at Richardson about the North American Free Trade Agreement. "We won't give any answers to those questions," he said.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon's conservative government staunchly opposes reopening NAFTA, a possibility Obama raised at a Feb. 26 debate during the Democratic primaries.

"I will make sure that we re-negotiate in the same way that Senator (Hillary) Clinton talked about," Obama said then, referring to the trade pact. "I think we should use the hammer of a potential opt-out as leverage to ensure that we actually get labor and environmental standards that are enforced."

Earlier Thursday, Agriculture Secretary Alberto Cardenas said he thought it was "a little remote" that the United States would actually try to reopen the trade accord, implemented in 1994.

"If in the campaign, at some given moment in some American state, the president-elect was heard to make such a statement, I think we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves," Cardenas told reporters. "I see it as a little remote that such a re-negotiation would actually take place."

Some U.S. labor groups say the trade accord has cost American jobs, but Mexican and U.S. officials say its net effect has been positive, boosting trade and employment on both sides of the border. Canada is also a member of the pact.