Reciprocidad imposible? La politica del comercio entre Mexico y Estados Unidos, 1857-1938 (review)

In order properly to appreciate Paolo Riguzzi's contribution to the history of U.S.-Mexican trade, one need not necessarily agree with his concluding remark that "Trade between the two countries was not 'reciprocal' in the sense that it was regulated by international agreements or treaties, but that did not prevent it from being mutually beneficial—even with differences of scale—and therefore effectively reciprocal" (p. 299). The key to such a judgment, of course, is precisely the comparative advantage produced by that trade relationship, as it evolved over time. But this is a very ambitious book and one that deserves considerable attention, both from economic and diplomatic historians.

Although Riguzzi's conclusions contrast sharply with those of John Mason Hart's recent Empire and Revolution (2002), both authors offer powerful evidence that, in the absence of state regulation, international markets in trade and investment decisively shape the direction of national development. Unlike Hart, however, Riguzzi focuses on the Mexican side of this complex relationship. He deploys the methods, analytical tools, and interests of the "New Institutional Economic History" to explore the relationship between states and markets in the development of the world system between 1857 and 1938. Targeting "structural theories" that presume a certain inevitability in the outcome of state-to-state relations between economically asymmetrical powers, Riguzzi insists that these are matters subject to empirical investigation, which he energetically undertakes in an exhaustive search of government and private archives in Mexico and the United States. By examining the bilateral commercial negotiations between U.S. and Mexican officials, Riguzzi identifies each nation's contradictory objectives, negotiating strategies, and operational outcomes. Two important assumptions distinguish his analytical approach: forged in an international context, state policy is the product of a consensus among competing domestic interests, and weak nations are not necessarily hapless political victims of economic asymmetry.

Divided into nine chapters, Riguzzi outlines his analytical framework and explores successively eight diplomatic negotiations over trade policy between 1857 and 1938. He distinguishes the domestic and international conditions that shaped negotiations during four distinct periods in the development of U.S.-Mexican relations, but, despite the variation in these national and bilateral contexts, Riguzzi finds that none was decisive in predicting the outcome of specific negotiations. On the contrary, Riguzzi's careful reading of the primary sources associated with each negotiation leads him to conclude that, except in 1883, the United States, despite its overwhelming economic, military, and political power, was unable to secure from Mexicans a formal tariff agreement that reflected U.S. commercial objectives; even the 1883 agreement was effectively sabotaged by economic interest groups in each country. Moreover, he finds that, more often than not, Mexican, not U.S., positions ultimately shaped the outcomes of these negotiations. For Riguzzi, there is no evidence in the historical record of bilateral U.S.-Mexican trade negotiations to support the "structuralist" argument that economic asymmetry automatically "provides leverage" or "translates into domination" (p. 298.)

This finding is particularly reinforced by Riguzzi's analysis of bilateral negotiations during 1917-1918, in the political economic chaos of the Mexican Revolution, and 1937-1938, when Mexico's depression-era regulation (and eventual nationalization) of foreign oil companies caused considerable animosity in U.S-Mexican relations. Ironically, economic crises that simultaneously produced a fierce nationalistic defense of Mexican sovereignty and tense diplomatic relations with the United States seemed to create the most favorable results for Mexican trade negotiations. Clearly, strong Mexican state regulation could and did resist U.S. power and shape market forces to promote a national development different than that envisioned by U.S. policymakers.

Notwithstanding occasionally ill-considered and empirically unsupported references to Woodrow Wilson's or Franklin Roosevelt's alleged "empathic disposition" toward Mexico, Riguzzi has produced a first-rate historical study of U.S.-Mexican commercial relations, greatly illuminating shadowy problems that variously have preoccupied scholars of economic...