Former Mexican president Vicente Fox says President Barack Obama and other U.S. leaders should focus their attention less on the Middle East and more on America’s Latin neighbors. “Instead of being always involved in … faraway nations like Afghanistan and Iraq, they should work with their neighbors, work with Mexico, work with Latin America,” Fox said at a reception last night at the Highland Park home of Kandis and Bill Hutchinson. “Unfortunately, that’s not what is going on.”
Fox, who was president from 2000 to 2006, also said the North American Free Trade Agreement, which turns 20 years old next year, needs to be reinvented and re-energized, in part to help North America become more competitive with Asia. “The threat of Asia is right there. China, India, the Seven Tigers, are very successful, fast-growing economies,” he said. “But … they are taking away our jobs. So we need to regain our productivity; I mean the productivity of North America. That can only be reached by working together.”
Fox, whose election in 2000 from the conservative National Action Party (PAN) brought to an end more than 70 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), was in Dallas to address a dinner meeting tonight of the Greater Dallas Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Today he was scheduled to speak to students in Dallas-area schools.
