One of President Enrique Pena Nieto’s top ministers and closest allies resigned on Wednesday, an apparent casualty of Pena Nieto’s wildly unpopular meeting last week with Donald Trump.
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Luis Videgaray, the finance minister who stepped down on Wednesday, had championed the idea of inviting Trump to Mexico City over the objections of other ministers, according to several Mexican news media reports, though Pena Nieto insisted it was his own initiative.
Pena Nieto said he had accepted Videgaray’s resignation but made no mention of reports he played a crucial role in setting up Trump’s August 31 meeting with the president.
He has shared both in the president’s triumphs and embarrassments; in 2014, Videgaray acknowledged he had bought a house from the same government contractor who sold a mansion to Pena Nieto’s wife, First Lady Angelica Rivera, in the administration’s deepest scandal.
Mexico’s finance minister stepped down Wednesday following his effort in becoming architect of United States presidential candidate Donald Trump’s visit.
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, another relatively unpopular man among Hispanics, invited both Trump and his largest competitor, Hillary Clinton, to Mexico, but only Trump accepted the invitation.
Whether deliberately or inadvertently, a political cartoon on the editorial page of your September 6 edition correctly identified the proposed wall between our nation and Mexico as “Donald Trump’s border wall”. “With Luis, Mexico and the United States would have made wonderful deals together – where both Mexico and the U.S. would have benefitted”. Meade previously held the finance portfolio in 2011 and 2012.
The 48-year-old, who ran Pena Nieto’s election campaign, was widely seen as the president’s top aide, with a huge influence on a broad swath of policy.
Senior diplomats said Videgaray had been instrumental arranging the visit.
He said the easier path would have been to “cross my arms” and do nothing in response to Mr Trump’s “affronts, insults and humiliations”, but he believed it necessary to open a “space for dialogue” to stress the importance of the US-Mexico relationship.
The president also invited Clinton, who declined this week.
But the economy has not performed as well as hoped, shrinking by 0.3 per cent in the second quarter, while the peso has dropped against the dollar.
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An investigation led by the minister for public administration cleared Videgaray and Pena Nieto of wrongdoing previous year, but critics questioned the probe as it was conducted by someone picked by the president.
