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Why Trump's in a hurry

If Donald Trump sounds like he's in a hurry to start renegotiating NAFTA, it's because he is. He says so. The president's team even admits a major reason for the urgency, which can be summed up in four words and they're not Canadian dairy, energy, or lumber.

They are: Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

In one year, Mexico will be deep into campaign mode. And the current poll leader is a fiery left-wing nationalist whose party website has listed, as its very top item, the story of how he filed a human-rights complaint last month against Trump.

This creates some pressure for Trump to get a deal soon or sleepwalk into a minefield of inhospitable options: negotiating in the dying days of the Mexican election, waiting to deal with the next president, possibly Lopez Obrador, or break his promise to revisit NAFTA.

The longtime Mexican politician and three-time presidential candidate, nicknamed AMLO, was in Washington last month to announce his complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights about Trump's treatment of migrants, and his plans for a border wall.

He called it embarrassing to see the current Mexican government prostrate before Trump.

"We do not want a relationship of subordination. We will not accept it. Mexico is a free, independent country — not a colony, nor a protectorate," he told a Washington news conference.

"Never will we subordinate ourselves to any foreign government."

Trump's team has made it abundantly clear they would rather deal with NAFTA before that candidate starts delivering that message, every day, to cheering crowds, on the campaign stump. The election is next July.



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