The Cabinet of Dr. Sheinbaum

Staffing up

Right to left: Ernestina Godoy, Alicia Bárcena, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, Claudia Sheinbaum, Marcelo Ebrard, Rosaura Ruiz Gutiérrez, Julio Berdegué Sacristán. Photo Marco Ugarte, AP

For those of you who may not have been following along at home, the Mexican peso took a bit of a beating after Claudia Sheinbaum’s landslide victory in Mexico’s presidential election earlier this month. Prior to the election, the peso was hovering around the high 16s to low 17s against the U.S. dollar. Immediately after the election, the peso fell to the 18s, nearly stumbling to 19 pesos to the U.S. dollar. People in Mexico holding U.S. dollars were, of course, quite pleased. Suddenly their dollars bought more in Mexico. Not quite good news for the majority in Mexico who are not wandering around with U.S. dollars in their bank accounts¹.

Why the fall? Simply put, the markets in Mexico and elsewhere panicked that the overwhelming victory of Sheinbaum and her Morena party - which are superficially characterized as “leftist” - meant that Mexico would go on a welfare spending spree, at the expense of business and the overall health of the economy. Last week, however, Sheinbaum calmed some of these fears when she announced her first of several rounds of cabinet appointments. Marcelo Ebrard - who you might recall was the Foreign Affairs Secretary under the current administration, and who ran against Sheinbaum for the presidential nomination of the Morena party - will be Sheinbaum’s Economy Secretary. Ebrard is a historically pro-business politician, and the announcement that he will lead Mexico’s economy put the peso in the more enviable position of 18(ish) to the U.S. dollar. Still not quite the robust currency it was in the past year, but markedly improved from its pre-Ebrard announcement position.

In addition to the somewhat currency-stabilizing Ebrard, Sheinbaum announced 5 other cabinet appointments:

• Juan Ramón de la Fuente - Foreign Minister

• Alicia Bárcena - Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources

• Ernestina Godoy - Legal advisor

• Julio Berdegué Sacristán - Secretary of Agriculture and Rural Development

• Rosaura Ruiz Gutiérrez - Minister of Science, Humanities, Technology and Innovation

OK, that list I just made you wade through is probably not terribly helpful beyond getting my word count up (and I don’t even get paid by the word). They are just there so I can say this: Sheinbaum’s appointments have been characterized as “technocratic” - people with strong political and technical experience and know-how. The last appointment on the list above is the most interesting though: the Minister of Science, Humanities, Technology and Innovation is a new position that Sheinbaum created. The woman filling it, Rosaura Ruiz Gutiérrez, is a biologist who served as the Secretary of Education for Mexico City when Sheinbaum was mayor, and before that was the head of the school of sciences at Mexico City’s prestigious Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). This new cabinet position not only further demonstrates Sheinbaum’s dedication to knowledge-based governance, but it is perhaps the first sign of Sheinbaum deviating from the “character” of her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Whereas Obrador tended to keep academics at arm’s length (he is, first and foremost, a populist leader), Sheinbaum appears to be embracing not only academia, but a vision of Mexico’s future that may be influenced by her own scientific background.

Or maybe she just threw darts on a board full of names from her and Morena’s past.

1. People in the tourism industry in Mexico were probably pleased to see the peso’s strength decline