Latino

Mexico’s new president: ‘Nobody will threaten us’ with a wall

by Rafael Bernal - 08/06/18 1:47 PM ET

The winner of Mexico’s presidential election told a group of engineers Monday that the country will not be threatened under his administration, in a thinly veiled reference to President Trump’s trade and border policies, according to Reforma newspaper.

“The purpose is that Mexico will become a power and that the correlation of strength will change, nobody will threaten us that they’ll close the borders or that they’ll militarize the border, that a wall will be built,” said Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who’s also known as AMLO, according to the newspaper.

López Obrador is expected to be officially named president-elect Wednesday, and sworn in as president on Dec. 1.

He won the July 1 election with 53 percent of the vote, a massive landslide by Mexican standards, where no candidate had come close to the 50 percent mark since the country’s democratic transition.

López Obrador — who won on an anti-corruption, left-of-center platform — said the country would gain strength through his administration’s economic policies.

“This will be possible because the country will grow and there will be jobs,” he said.

López Obrador told the group of engineers that he will allow foreign energy investment — a keystone reform enacted by President Enrique Peña Nieto — but that he will prioritize investment from countries with low corruption.

“We are excited to work with Norway [and] Denmark,” he said.

Tags AMLO Border wall Donald Trump Mexico