In San Miguel de Allende. Image – Getty: OGphoto
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
‘It Is Crucial To Defend the Principles’
Policy makers and journalists trying to follow Donald Trump’s Mexican and Canadian tariff reversals today (March 6) scrambled to keep up. This, as creative industries in Mexico—book publishing among them—made it clear where they stood.
At The New York Times, Ana Swanson wrote, “President Trump said he was suspending new tariffs on most imports from Mexico and Canada until April 2, two days after he imposed sweeping levies of 25 percent on two of the nation’s closest economic partners … a whipsaw reversal that followed days of economic turmoil. Stocks in the United States closed down 1.8 percent on Thursday.”
Well known to Publishing Perspectives‘ international readers, especially after December’s International Publishers Congress in Guadalajara, Hugo Setzer has spoken to Niza Rivera at Proceso, reflecting on the fact that difficult times can make for unexpected bedfellows. Setzer, of course, is the president of Cámara Nacional de la Industria Editorial Mexicana (CANIEM), the Mexican publishers’ association, with its membership of 196 companies.
He’s also a past president of the International Publishers Association (IPA) and an engaged observer of the political scene in North America today.
‘The Ties of Cooperation’
“The Mexican publishing industry has always sought to contribute to society in Mexico by doing what we are supposed to do,” Setzer says to Rivera, “publishing works that help develop education and culture in our country, and we will continue to do that of course. I think that in this case it is, for now, moral support, and I think it is important to express that as well.”
Related Article: Mexico’s Book Chamber Files Lawsuit in Schoolbook Dispute. Image – Getty: Kertu EE
What he’s referring to is a CANIEM statement that has carefully closed ranks with the Claudia Sheinbaum government in this particular moment—despite the nationalization of a major part of the Mexican textbook industry that has been extremely tough on the book industry. That nationalization began not with Sheinbaum but with her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
“CANIEM has differences with the Mexican government,” Setzer concedes in speaking with Rivera, “and we have expressed this on many occasions, such as in the educational policy of the ‘single textbook.’ However, it is important to support ourselves, in the face of an external threat.”
That threat, needless to say is the on-again, off-again tariff measures that Trump is pursuing to both international and American distress. And CANIEM’s statement on the crisis reflects this. It reads in part:
“The Mexican publishing industry, as a fundamental part of the country’s cultural and educational fabric, joins the concern expressed by the national private sector, recognizing that this decision impacts not only the supply chains built over more than 30 years, but also the ties of cooperation that have consolidated North America as one of the most competitive regions in the world.”
In characterizing the wrenching 25-percent tariffs that Trump has levied and now suspended on Mexico, the publishers call them an action “that puts at risk the economic and cultural dynamism that has characterized the bilateral relationship in recent decades.
Hugo Setzer
“The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), in force since 2020, has been a pillar for the growth of the regional economy,” the CANIEM statement says, “facilitating the exchange of goods, services and ideas. Today more than ever, it is crucial to defend the principles that underpin this agreement, since not only commercial stability depends on it, but also the flow of knowledge and the promotion of cultural diversity that strengthen our societies.”
And so it is that the Mexican professional publishing community finds itself in limbo with the rest of its national market (and that of Canada and the United States) as Washington’s sweeping threat of tariffs seem to ebb and flow like tides in the “Gulf of America,” as Trump has insisted the body of water be called.
But clearly, Mexican publishers are watchful, wary, and worried, as Setzer reminds us that Mexico exports books to the United States with its major Spanish-language population.
As he tells Proceso about the publishers’ chamber he leads, “The members must be defended.”
More from Publishing Perspectives on the Mexican book market is here, more on the 34th International Publishers Congress led by CANIEM is here, and more on the work of Hugo Setzer and the educational publishing crisis is here.
Publishing Perspectives is the International Publishers Association’s world media partner.