Mexico Flirts With Suicide

Leftist Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador-AMLO, as he is popularly known-has worked hard to convince markets that he is no Hugo Chávez. Former Argentine President Cristina Kirchner, maybe, but not Chávez.

Argentine politician Axel Kicillof fanned the flames of those fears when he visited Mexico earlier this month. A former economy minister for Mrs. Kirchner, Mr. Kicillof today calls himself a Keynesian. But while working in the Kirchner government he was known for hard-left antimarket activism and fiery rants fomenting envy and hatred among Argentines.

Mr. Kicillof gave a speech titled “How to confront neoliberalism and not die trying: Argentina, Mexico and the new conservative wave in Latin America,” at the national university in Mexico City. But he also called on two powerful Mexican senators of Mr. López Obrador’s Morena Party and had meetings with government officials.

If Mr. López Obrador and his team were serious about maintaining Mexico’s image as a destination for capital, they would have ducked Mr. Kicillof when he came to town. That they didn’t is reason to turn up the worry meter and pay greater attention to the trading relationships that link the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

Mexico is still a free country and the right of Mr. Kicillof’s hosts-who happen to be among the country’s most vociferous AMLO supporters-to provide a platform in the public square for his ideas remains secure. But for a government that claims to want to prove its rule-of-law bona fides, the Kicillof visit looks like a foolish, self-inflicted wound.

It’s hard to believe it was a misstep. An alternative theory is that the government brought in Mr. Kicillof to plow ground for the AMLO agenda-a k a the “fourth transformation”-which the Argentine praised during his visit. The kirchneristas left office in 2015 in shame, having destroyed the country. Center-right Argentine President Mauricio Macri is still struggling to steady the economy, and Mr. Kicillof has no intention of letting the crisis go to waste.

The symbolism embedded in the Kicillof visit isn’t lost on investors. They know that Mexico has been working to modernize for a quarter-century and has made important progress. They also know that kirchernismo would drag it backward as it did Argentina.

This is a wake-up call for the Trump administration. With international socialists putting Mexico in play, the appropriate U.S. response is to deepen engagement with its southern neighbor.

Only Mexico’s wacky hard left could see Mr. Kicillof’s legacy of no-holds-barred populism as successful because it irresponsibly expanded social programs. Mr. Kicillof was part of a disastrous Argentine agenda that ran up huge budget deficits, pressured the central bank to print money, and destroyed the country’s investment profile. Mr. Kicillof preached against property rights and applauded debt default and the confiscation of foreign assets. Locals weren’t off limits: Mrs. Kirchner nationalized private pension accounts in Argentine banks.

In his daily news conferences, Mr. López Obrador can seem invincible. From his moral high horse he scolds the press, denigrates the entrepreneurial class, and scoffs at the law. But his power rests on his high approval rating, which is unlikely to be sustained if investors flee the country and the peso collapses.

This reality is recognized by the practical AMLO, and it is why, despite his disdain for market economics, he has so far been forced to respect the North American Free Trade Agreement, which remains in effect.

Nafta isn’t, as some trade skeptics suggest, a handout to Mexico. It is an economic and geopolitical tool that modernizers on both sides of the border have used for a quarter-century to advance and lock in gains in Mexican economic freedom. Retaining it, or passing President Trump’s U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, is crucial to holding on to that progress.

Trade is voluntary exchange that is not only mutually beneficial in economic terms but also facilitates the flow of ideas and goodwill between nations. Isolation, by contrast, creates the conditions in which demagogues gain power. By shoring up the trade relationship between the U.S. and Mexico, Washington can help Mexicans beat back the dangerous left-wing populism that Mr. Kicillof represents.

You wouldn’t guess any of this from listening to President Trump’s continual bully-pulpit assaults against Mexico as a trading partner, or by watching Congress dither over passing the president’s updated Nafta agreement.

Some hope emerged Friday, when the Trump administration announced it has come to an agreement with Canada and Mexico to lift the steel and aluminum tariffs that Mr. Trump imposed last year. But congressional approval of the USMCA remains uncertain, and the vultures are circling. One, from Argentina, even landed recently in Mexico.