The Ministry of Foreign Affairs ensures that deadlines for reaching an agreement with the American company Vulcan Materials are being shortened. In his latest conversation with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Foreign Minister Juan Ramón De la Fuente understood that the ruling from the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) of the World Bank would be imminent and would set an uncomfortable precedent for the government regarding the renegotiation of the USMCA. Vulcan's claim, a company with strong lobbying within the Republican Party, began in 2018 and is governed by the dispute resolution norms of the USMCA. The case was triggered during Andrés Manuel López Obrador's six-year term when the company's exploitation of a 53,000-hectare mine in the Caribbean was suspended due to alleged environmental irregularities. The former president promised to resolve the issue before leaving office, apparently with compensation for Vulcan, but that agreement never materialized. The dispute was then transferred to the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) led by Alicia Bárcena, but no significant progress was made. In fact, this is reportedly one of the reasons for a possible departure of Bárcena from the cabinet. The government's latest management involved proposing a low-impact eco-tourism development in which Vulcan could receive profits. A negotiation that would be in a complex phase due to issues related to the project's development and the role various Mexican entrepreneurs, some close to López Obrador, would play in it. The problem of a potential ruling against Mexico in an international tribunal is that it would lend force to an idea already circulating in Washington's business chambers: that the new USMCA establish that for U.S.-capital companies operating in Mexico, ICSID be the venue for conflict resolution, given that the Mexican justice system is unreliable due to López Obrador's judicial reform. Thus, the Vulcan case adds to a series of tensions in the bilateral relationship, such as tariffs, security, water sharing on the northern border, the containment of Chinese businesses in Mexico, or the drama surrounding the Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA).
