Andrés Rozental is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations, (Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales), a member of CIGI’s International Advisory Board of Governors and a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Carla Angulo-Pasel is a research officer at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. 

Did Media Coverage Enhance or Threaten the Viability of G20 Summits?

The general media opinion on the Seoul summit was that the G20 leaders were unable to bridge their differences on two key points: the global rebalancing issue and the commitments to avoid further protectionism of exchange rate manipulation. The view was there were too many issues for leaders to resolve in a day and a half, when their finance ministers and Sherpas had been unable to find common ground in the weeks and months preceding the summit. In that respect, the summit was branded as a “half success” on the issues where there was general agreement and a “half failure” on those where there was not. The Mexican media paid a great deal of attention to the China-US spat on renmibi revaluation and on the differences between the Europeans and the US on fixing specific trade imbalance targets which would trigger rebalancing.

Mexico’s role was again not given a high profile, but the amount of attention devoted by the media to this summit was considerably more than previous ones, partially because the Calderón administration will host the G20 in 2012 and Mexico is now part of the G20 “troika.”

How was the Rebalancing Issue Dealt With?

As a whole, the media in Mexico did not go into the details concerning the processes involved in the rebalancing issue, mainly because they are quite complex and do not lend themselves to general coverage. Analysts have yet to weigh in on the substance of the issue, but there was attention paid to the fact that the Mexican peso has strengthened considerably over the last few weeks and especially after quantitative easing (QE 2) was announced in the US. This is seen as worrisome by much of the private sector, already concerned at Mexico’s competitive disadvantage resulting from the war on drug cartels and its resulting violence. As a 20-year member of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Mexico is very familiar with the peer review process and, thus, it didn’t get as much media attention here as might be the case in other developing G20 countries. There is a general worry with the global economy and the threat of further recessionary pressures with our largest trading partner, the US. As a rule, Mexican analysts have approached the G20 agenda with the bilateral US-Mexico relationship as a defining parameter.

The Role of President Felipe Calderón

Felipe Calderón appeared at the front and centre of the group photograph for the first time, resulting in more graphic coverage of the summit than on previous occasions. Calderón co-signed an opening public statement along with other leaders at the summit, and this was given a fair amount of media coverage. The president has not yet held a press conference, but the broad impression is that he didn’t play a central role at the summit, as was the case at previous G20 gatherings.

Reflections on the Role of South Korea

By and large, Korea’s “breakthrough” as host of the G20 went unnoticed as an important milestone, mainly because Korea is geographically far away from Mexico and also given that there are many other meetings (such as Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and others) that the Mexican president attends at venues in Asia and other developing countries. Most Mexicans tend to make comparisons between Mexico and Brazil, rather than Korea. Instead, media attention was focused on the video widely circulated via social networks of the “heated discussion” between the American and Chinese leaders.