Mexico’s president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum has appointed loyalists of current President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to key cabinet roles as observers and markets eye how closely she will adhere to her mentor’s approach.
Sheinbaum has kept the welfare and labor ministers who manage more than $30bn of annual spending for social programs central to the ruling Morena party’s popularity. The finance minister, Rogelio Ramírez de la O, will also remain in his role to calm investors.
Nine out of 20 cabinet picks are people who served under López Obrador, with Rosa Icela Rodríguez, currently in charge of the government’s security policy, set to lead the interior ministry. The secretaries of defense and the navy will be her final two appointments, but she has supported the president’s vast expansion of their responsibilities and power.
The cabinet almost complete, Sheinbaum’s appointments suggest continuity with López Obrador’s top priorities and a more technical approach than her predecessor. Just over half her cabinet did not serve under López Obrador, with many linked to her time in the city government and academia.
Juan Ramón de la Fuente, former rector of Mexico’s National Autonomous University and a diplomat, will be foreign minister. Agronomist and former UN Food and Agricultural Organisation official Julio Berdegué will take the agriculture portfolio.
The policy area expected to change under Sheinbaum is renewable energy, with Luz Elena González, the former Mexico City finance minister who is personally close to her taking up the energy brief. She has also promised to broadly follow fiscal austerity while aiming to nearly halve a deficit of 6 per cent of GDP this year.
The incoming government will have to take on the challenge of the relationship with the US, where Donald Trump is the favorite to win the presidency in November. More than 80 per cent of Mexico’s exports go to the US. Some appointments, such as former foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard in the economy ministry, are seen as made with Washington in mind.
Overall, Sheinbaum’s cabinet looks more pragmatic, more moderate, and more technical, with a focus on continuity with López Obrador’s priorities, but also with some changes to her predecessor’s approach.
Source: Financial Times
