Inside the World Cup's Narco State

0:00David McWilliams: This episode of the podcast is brought to you by Count of its Gerald Ireland, proud sponsors of my own festival, the Dawki Book Festival, which is on the 18th and 21st of June. Now, in Dawki, you're going to expect four days of ideas, of literature, of politics, of economics, comedy and culture with over 100 writers, including Salman Rushdie, Tim Berners-Lee, the man who founded the internet and, of course, Booker Prize winner Anne Enright. join us this summer in Dalky. Thanks again to Cantor Fitzgerald Ireland, helping people plan with clarity, invest with confidence and build lasting wealth.

0:36David McWilliams: Find out more at cantorfitzgerald.ie. Cantor Fitzgerald Ireland Limited is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Three, two, one. Coming up on the podcast in a couple of minutes, we are going down Mexico way. We're looking at, against the background of the World Cup, we're looking at Mexico, the football team, the country, the politics, the narco state, and the complications of running this enormous economy wedged between Latin America or South America and North America. That's all coming up Mexico in a couple of minutes. A BetterHelp ad. Hold on. One second. I just need to...

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2:42David McWilliams: How you doing there? It is time for the podcast today. It's all things Mexican, John. You can see you at your sombrero. Aha. Okay, so that was John's impression of a Mexican person. I would apologise to our burgeoning Mexican audience. John, it's a sort of a cross between... It's like if you're trying to be Ernest Shackleton or something. I just had some tequila, so it's just kicking in now. So we're going to get tequila. We're going to talk about narco-drugs. Yeah. Narco drugs as opposed to narcotic. We're going to talk about the Mexican economy. We're going to talk about great Mexican moments of football.

3:19David McWilliams: And of course, the greatest Mexican moment of football was playing against the Republic of Ireland. Oh yeah, that was their highlight. That was their highlight when they hockeyed us in Florida. And we complained about the heat as if the Mexicans had inflicted the heat upon us. But it was actually the Americans. That was, for those of you who don't remember, who probably in the vague, hazy, hazy memory googled 1994 World Cup, Florida, Ireland against Mexico. And you were at that, Mac. I was at that particular campaign. Yeah. But I didn't make that particular game. It was too hot for you. It was, I tell you, it was too hot.

3:58David McWilliams: We went a bit early. Right. To the boozer. And we stayed. Oh, really? Yes. Did you have tickets for them, Mac? Yeah. It was a very hazy trip. But basically what happened on that trip was I was in London, working in London, had no real intention of going to the World Cup. I wanted to, but I was working and whatever. And then Ray Houghton chipped the Italian keeper. Ray Houghton goes, I've got to come on there. But he said, Ray Houghton chipped the Italian keeper in the Giants stadium. And we beat the Italians. And I said, that's it, got to go. So flew over. and then watched a series of brutal games.

4:39David McWilliams: I think it was Norway, Holland, Mexico, which we didn't even bother going to. Right. But it was a hazy trip. So anybody who has got long football memories... It must have cost you a fortune. It probably did, yeah. But it was worth it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's no better crack than going to watch the boys in green away. Yeah. That's the key. There's a certain creature that follows the boys in green. was a certain male, rather hopeful male, who follows the boys in Greenaway. You've got to be optimistic. And I have been at so many brilliant, odd nights where you'd bump into the craziest fish. So anyway, we are talking about the World Cup that Ireland did not qualify for.

5:21David McWilliams: We are now talking about Mexico. We're going to talk about Mexican economy, Mexican politics, what is going on in Mexico. So the amazing thing about Mexico, John, it is the 13th largest economy in the world. Really? Yeah. And people don't really ever contemplate economics when they talk about Mexico. 13th largest in the world. It's America's number one trade partner in the world. And is that because a lot of the American manufacturing moved down to Mexico? Exactly. And they grow lovely avocados. They love gruel, vacacadas, and there's lots of drugs. So we're going to talk about the... So Mexico is two economies.

6:04You have the formal economy. It's actually three economies. You've got the formal economy, which is taxed and above board, etc. Then you've got the informal economy, which is basically the black economy. And then you have the narco economy. The narco economy is absolutely huge in relative terms. And so what you find in Mexico is this strange, strange contrast between, in the north of Mexico in particular, should we call Mexamerica, because it basically is part of the North American economy. And as you said, FDI, particularly in the automotive sector. And they've done extremely well out of Chinese tariffs.

6:49Because what happened was when Trump declared war on the Chinese tariff-wise, the Americans had to produce what they were buying from China somewhere else. And of course, they couldn't produce it. And America was still too expensive. So American companies has pivoted away from China to Mexico. So the Mexicans have done extremely well in the last 24 months out of Trump, which again, given that he described Mexico as a shithole country, is kind of ironic. Well, I have to say, I mean, I spent a little bit of time. You know, in America, they have that spring break. Oh, yes. When I was living in L.A., me and some of the lads, Shano and Brinzer and Mick McCarthy, we jumped in a car and drove down, across the border through Tijuana and through Rosarita and down to Ensenada.

7:41And we spent the weekend in Ensenada on the spring break, doing all the spring break stuff. Are you sure you want to tell people in the podcast? No, I was just saying, and it was very interesting.

7:52David McWilliams: People were very friendly. But what a trip. Yeah, it's a great country. I've been to Mexico just once in Yucatan, Chichen Itza. Oh yeah, nice. You really, it's a wonder of the world. Yeah. You know, it's the old Mayan ruins. You know when they found those in the jungle? Yeah. And it is extraordinary. I mean, you stand back, you look at the size of these pyramids and the majesty of the buildings and the madness of the sculptors. Just crazy. Built by aliens. You know that. Of course, built by aliens. Of course, built by aliens. Who are coming back. They're already here, mate. I know, I know. Already here.

8:32David McWilliams: Anyway, enough of that. So think about GDP,$1.8 trillion. Right, okay. Right? It's 13th largest now economy in the world. But, John, drug cartels are the fourth largest employer in Mexico. Wow. Now think about that. That is extraordinary, right? And that's what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about the narco economy, how it emerged, where it emerged from, why it emerged, where it did, when it did, what they are selling, what the Americans are buying, and how it has totally and utterly corrupted the Mexican body politic. Have you watched Narcos? You know, I haven't. It's really good.

9:15David McWilliams: Okay. So basically, what happened was Colombia was the first Narcos state. People will know the name Pablo Escobar. Basically, the Medellin cartel, all that sort of stuff, right? And then when the Americans came down really heavily against the Colombians, The Colombian cartels were destroyed de facto. Yeah. But those cartels shifted their production and their operation to Mexico. And they ceded power to the Mexican cartels, who have now become this enormous parallel force within Mexico. And, of course, because of the geography, the Mexican cartels control the route of all drugs from Latin America up through Mexico and into the United States, and they have exploded.

10:03David McWilliams: I'll give you a few figures, John. Total annual revenue from the drug trade is estimated at 12 billion annually. Now, I think that's probably an understatement. Probably, yeah. But that's the official, right? Fentanyl production. So it used to be weed. Then it was coke. It's still weed and coke, but now it is fentanyl. And just look at the mathematics of this, right? fentanyl costs them 10 cent a pill to make in Mexico. It's estimated, right? Those pills that cost 10 cent to make can be sold between$10 and$30 on the street in the United States, right? That's a margin, isn't it? 10 kilos of fentanyl is worth around$20 million on the street, costs about$50 ,000 to produce.

10:54so you can see the extraordinary attraction of that. And of course, fentanyl is really small. Yes.

11:01David McWilliams: The problem with weed, it's really bulky. So weed is bulky. Coke is less bulky, but still bulky. Fentanyl, you can pack so much more into a tiny, tiny amount. Yeah, so it's much easier to shift. But then there's the Chinese link to all of that. So the Chinese are manufacturing the precursors into fentanyl. They're shipping this to Mexico. Mexico assembles and produces the fentanyl and then sends it up north to the United States. And if you've seen any fentanyl victims, because they are victims, it's the most shocking thing. I think I told you I saw, I was in Vancouver a couple of years ago, and there are not large parts but a significant part of downtown Vancouver has been basically ceded to these poor creatures.

11:59That's what they eat. And they've got that sort of fentanyl walk. It's like, it's zombie, it's zombie stuff. You know, the interesting thing about fentanyl is that it's a brilliant drug. I was given it a while ago as a painkiller and it works. but it was manufactured first in Belgium in the 1950s and it was used in the Vietnam War and that's what they were giving them either morphine or fentanyl and all the rest then it was prescribed by the Purdue's of this world the Sackler family yeah and and they were the ones who were pushing it they were the biggest drug pushers and they got a whole lot of people who were on kind of long-term pain medication and shifted them on to kind of fentanyl.

12:43And then when they came off that, essentially they couldn't come off that. And they went onto heroin. Onto heroin and fentanyl on the street. Yeah. Think about it. So the drugs are one big part, right? Yeah. Second big part is illegal fuel makes up 16 to 27 % of Mexico's annual fuel consumption.

13:03David McWilliams: So do you know on the border you just have a red and green diesel? Yeah. Provost were always good at this, smuggling, right? So this is an age-old smuggling thing. You buy fuel cheaply in America, you sell it more expensively in Mexico. And of course, what that does, so the cartels have got all these operations going. What that does is because the Americans keep the price of gas down, that's their big obsession, right? And the Mexicans are more and more like Europeans, the social democratic idea that, you know, the price of fuel should be more expensive. So that basically fuel smuggling is a massive, massive cross-border operation.

13:36And it's estimated there's 1.6 illegal fuel petrol stations for every legal and regulated petrol station. So there's more illegal petrol stations, right? How do you know if you're driving along in the car and you go, I'm running low on fuel, how do you know when you're pulling into it? Do you care? Well, fair point. You don't.

13:56David McWilliams: But the problem with Mexico is Mexico is an oil producer. So it's losing money, right? So Pemex is their big oil producer because the Gulf of Mexico, rechristened to the Gulf of America by Donald, right? The Gulf of Mexico is full of oil and they've lost, it's close to three quarters of a billion dollars every year from this illegal fuel smuggling, right? Wow, okay. Then, of course, cartels, human smuggling, massive operation, right? Primarily from Mexico to the Americans, they think it's worth 13 billion annually. It's paid to the cartels. That is up from 500 million in 2018. That's 26 times higher now.

14:39So it shows you, if you're interested in this on the issue of literature and books, Janine Cummins is coming to the Dawkey Book Festival. Oh, right. She wrote that amazing book, American Dirt.

14:51David McWilliams: I don't know if you've read it. Really extraordinary about a Mexican family, and mother and daughter and their journey to the United States were paying all the cartels and the violence and the extraordinary risks these people take. Cruelty of it. Oh, God. Yeah, absolutely. So again, human smuggling, right? And then just general extortion, John. Basically going up to... Your commoner gardener. Your commoner gardener extorting money out of businesses, probably about$1.3 billion is extorted from like fellows with taco vans and things like that, you know? Yeah. And so it's endemic. 97 % of all extortion by the cartels goes unreported in Mexico because people are terrified of them, because they kill people in their thousands.

15:40And we've seen that. And of course, then the general prostitution, weapons, frauds, all sorts of fronts for frauds, taxi businesses, laundrettes, all that sort of, especially, John, avocados, which is one of the great money laundering fronts of Mexico. Really? Because you can make your drug money legal if you can be seen to actually have massive avocado farms. Yeah. So it's all linked. And of course, the thing is that the cartels are now getting involved in niche industries like telecom, right? Small towns in Mexico. One story showed that high costs of internet was being forced on its citizens by the cartels.

16:24Right. So they basically hijack the Wi-Fi, repackage it, and extort money from your average person. But, you know, politically, how do you deal with this? Because obviously the politicians, the Mexican politicians, are, if they're not already in the pocket of the cartels, they're under pressure. They're under death threats. So basically what you have is you've got an enormous, enormous illegal industry. And then that money needs to be washed and needs to be cleaned. So you've got enormous money laundering industry across huge sectors. They're buying hotels. This is basically the mafia, right? And then, of course, the whole point of the cartel is they embed themselves into public life at every single level so that anything material has to go through them.

17:17So you can imagine the amount of backhanders that have gone through on the building of the World Cup stadiums alone. Yeah. And the whole World Cup infrastructure, because the World Cup, again, is ideal for money laundering because it's a service industry and people need cash. So you can see it's all going on. But even if you look at an extraordinary figure, Mexican produces no weapons. Right. Okay. None. They have no arms industry. Right. 80 % of all their weapons come from the United States. Yeah. So the United States are selling guns, and not guns, heavy artillery. I mean, I saw the Mexican cops in Yucatan.

17:58They are sitting in jeeps with massive machine guns. Like, machine guns. Bazookas and stuff. But yeah, crazy stuff, right? Yeah. Who's selling that to them? The Americans. The Americans are selling both to the cartels and to the Mexican government, the Mexican cops. So the Americans, this is a huge business for the United States because they sell to both sides. So to come back to your question. But that's the irony of the whole thing. So, I mean, again, a lot of Latin Americans would say, look, yeah, we produce all this coke and stuff, but you guys consume it. We're buying it, yeah. You're the problem.

18:31Yeah.

18:31David McWilliams: You're the people we're feeding. We're not, you know, we're not the drug addicts. You guys are the drug addicts. They say there's such a problem in the United States that this massive consumption of all classes of drugs and everything. But you see Mexico's cut physically as well as economically. economically between North America and Latin America. So that Mesoamerican area is just caught. It's just the, it is the only way going north to south and vice versa. And also to Europe, you know, because all the Coke in Europe, and Europe is a bigger consumer of Coke than America is at this stage. And it comes through.

19:08And it comes from Mexico and, you know, all the South American countries. Actually, there's a really interesting podcast called Colored from AML Intelligence. It's all about money laundering and fraud and scams and the whole lot. It's a brilliant series. It's just started. But there is one episode that looks at narco states and looks at Belgium as a possible or on the verge of being a narco state. There I was thinking it was just waffles and beer and moule and frites.

19:39David McWilliams: But you're saying the Belgians are... And we're going to do a piece on Belgium because Belgium is one of the favorite football teams. Right, okay. So we'll come back to Belgium. I'm fascinated by this, that Belgium is a narco state. Just to explain that, Dan is, very briefly, it's because of the Albanian gangs. They control Antwerp and all the big ports and are beginning to infiltrate all the kind of government institutions and the European institutions. The capital of the European Union could well be a narco state. Yeah. Okay, hold that thought. Yeah, yeah. Hold that thought. Listener, you heard it here first.

20:14David McWilliams: We're going to be talking about Belgium, the narco state, very soon. But let's go back to politics and the narco state in Mexico. Because, of course, what they're doing is they're paying judges. They're paying cops. They're paying politicians. Everybody is enmeshed with the narco state. 30 candidates running in Mexico's 2024 election last year were murdered by the cartels for not playing ball. I mean, the murder rates are extraordinary. Murders associated with political violence have risen by 356 % from 2011 to 2024. And they're very public as well. That's the other thing about those murders. Exactly, because it's to say that I'm the big guy.

21:03Yeah.

21:03David McWilliams: Because, of course, there isn't one cartel. There are many cartels, and those cartels are fighting with each other. They're fighting with the cops. They're fighting with the states. They're fighting with the Americans, the whole thing. But they're running states within states. This is the whole thing, and this is why they're a bit like the mafia, is that their idea is to basically set up a state within the state and buy everybody, terrorize everybody, money launder their money so that they're the richest guys in the block, and as you say, use extreme violence. Yeah, yeah. And not only use extreme violence, but publicly make people aware of the extreme violence so that the whole state is living in a permanent state of anxiety and you can't get away from these people.

21:51I mean, I don't know if you saw Narcos. There's a moment where Pablo Escobar,

21:55David McWilliams: now I know he was in Mexico and he was Colombian, is in effect positioning himself as a Robin Hood sort of character. That he's robbing from the rich and giving to the poor. And he has so much money that he has to give it out. He has to give it away. And again, the cartels in Mexico are doing the same thing. What they're doing is they're giving welfare to people. They're giving rations to people. They're saying they're basically, you know, doing what all mafiosos do. They're buying off the electorate because what they're trying to do is undermine profoundly the credibility and the effectiveness of the state itself.

22:31So this is happening all the time, right? And again, where they are most prevalent, ironically, You know, you kind of think that it's sort of big stuff and it's big drug deals or whatever. No, actually, what the most prevalent is in this informal economy. You know, street vendors, fellas selling tacos, you know, all this sort of thing, you know, tortilla sellers, these sort of things. It's estimated that the informal sector, which is about over half the population in general Mexico, is being preyed on by cartels, right?

23:02David McWilliams: There's a thing called the PISO, which is a cartel tax, which is essentially a money, it's a heist. It's a heist, so they're extorting people, like what the provost did and the UVF in Belfast. Yeah. You know, you have to pay your protection money or you won't get protected by us. So this is going on on a monumental scale. It's thought that extortion is now the third most common crime in Mexico after fraud and robbery, right? Incredibly, 20 million out of the 126 million people who live in Mexico are victims of cartel extortion annually. Wow. And it could be a few pesos here, a few dollars here.

23:42It's not much. But it all adds up. And of course... Of course it is. Especially when you're poor and you're just trying to get by. Exactly. So, you know, tortilla sellers are fair game for these cartel guys. So can you imagine how anxious you must be to live in a small rural town in Mexico?

24:02David McWilliams: So I'll give you an example. There's a small rural town called Buena Vista. And like lots and lots of these small rural towns, when NAFTA started the North American Free Trade Organization, Mexican farmers came face to face with American farmers for the first time ever. And American farmers were much more productive. using huge amounts of pesticides. Economies of scale, you think of your Ohio's of this world, that sort of extraordinary agricultural belt of the Midwest, right? Yeah, yeah. And they are flooding Mexico with cheap American products. And of course, Mexican farmers are going out of business.

24:42So in the same way as Mexican industrialists did well out of making American cars in Mexico and exporting them north, American farmers destroyed the Mexican market because their economies of scale are just so much more and the capital they deploy is just so much more. So, of course, what happens then? The farmers are unemployed. What can they do?

25:02David McWilliams: They are preyed on by the cartels to be the messenger boys, to be the smugglers, to be the killers of the next generation of cartels. And so what you see is that all over Mexico, where farming has become much less attractive, into that vacuum are the cartels selling weed, growing weed, and of course then producing fentanyl, producing the coke that comes from Colombia, all that sort of thing. So you have an extraordinary mess of normal economics and informal cartel economics. Just give you a sense of how violent this is. The wars against the cartels have officially resulted in 497 ,446 homicides between 2006 and 2025.

25:59That's outrageous, isn't it? That's about 20 to 30 killings per 100 ,000 people, along with, and this is what you've painted as well, 391 ,722 disappearances where people just disappear. They're just killed on the side of a road. Their bodies are buried. Nobody ever finds them. So these are phenomenal rates. That makes Mexico up there with the Central African Republic, with Nigeria, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Brazil in terms of homicide rates. And of course, what you find then is when you have homicide and when you have the people

26:42David McWilliams: getting terrorized by the narcos and the state not able to come in on the people's side, you get vigilantes. Because the people say, well, screw this. We're going to protect ourselves. And of course, that pushes the society into yet more cycles of violence because now you have the vigilantes against the cartels and it's the person with the biggest gun wins. Of course. So again, when the Americans are manufacturing all these guns, selling them to the... So basically, the extraordinary thing is the Mexicans are selling drugs to the Americans. The Americans are selling guns to the Mexicans. The Mexican people are being slaughtered in their tens of thousands just to keep this whole show on the road.

27:24And it's not that the government isn't in control. It can't control. So the Mexican army, no matter what they deploy against these cartels,

27:34David McWilliams: are still playing catch-up all the time. And of course, all operations against cartels depend on informers. Because when you're trying to actually disentangle a criminal organization, what you need is you need information. And therefore, everybody becomes suspicious of everybody else. Because the informers are paid by the cops. But then that creates anxiety in the cartels. then the cartels then have to try and dissuade others from being informers so they kill thousands of people on the basis if you do this this is what's going to happen to you and your family and you get this just vortex of violence there's so much of the cartel operations aren't hidden you know it's quite open but here's the here's the question you know at this stage then those two parallel economies that you're talking about our power bases even yeah yeah are so enmeshed and so intertwined at this stage that it's almost impossible to kind of pick it apart.

28:37So how do we solve it? How do the Mexican government approach this? Well, let me give you some figures, between 2008 and 2021, the United States spent$3.5 billion on cooperation with Mexico in security and counter-narcos forces, right? This episode of the David Mark Williams podcast is brought to you by Long Angle. Mark, have you ever come across Long Angle?

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29:42David McWilliams: And that's what Long Angle is. It's a vetted peer community, 8 ,000 members, no membership fee, where people at that level of financial complexity just help each other out, help each other to think clearly, someone who's made the call you're about to make. You do need to qualify to get in. Which is the point. Longangle.com slash David. Longangle.com slash David. If you felt stuck trying to lose weight, you're not alone. Enter Weight Loss by HERS. It's designed to support you in reaching your goals. And HERS now offers access to an affordable range of FDA-approved GLP-1 medications, including the Wegovi pill and the Wegovi pen.

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31:09Parles-tu français? Hablas espanol? Parli italiano? If you've used Babbel, you would. Babbel's conversation-based technique teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, Babbel is like having a private tutor in your pocket. Start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55 % off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com slash acast. Spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash acast. Rules and restrictions may apply. The cartel activity is probably costing collectively the Mexicans about$254 billion,

32:01David McWilliams: roughly 18 % of GDP every year. So that's what they're losing. So the incentive for the Mexican government to get in control of this is enormous. And they're trying as much as possible to deploy troops. So even this year alone, they deployed an extra 130 ,000 Mexican troops on the border with the United States. These are big, big figures. This is a 40 % increase in the military budget fighting the narcos and fighting the cartels, right? Now, interestingly, homicide rates have fallen dramatically in the last year. And people are saying that Shinebound, this new president, should get the credit.

32:41David McWilliams: Lots of other people are saying, let's just wait and see. Let's just wait and see. But homicides have fallen. But the problem is to dismantle a narco state is incredibly difficult. Of course, yeah. Because the incentive structure to maintain the narco state are there. So the basic idea is Americans and Europeans consume drugs in monumental quantities. The Latin Americans say, well, hold on a second. what else are we supposed to do? You know, this is what we make. And we are only servicing a need. And of course, the entire war against drugs is rarely figured on trying to stop people taking drugs.

33:24David McWilliams: And it's all trying to stop people importing drugs. I mean, the war on drugs began with Nixon, didn't it? It did, yeah. In the mid 70s. And then Nancy Reagan took over. Just so you know. Just so you know. So they'd ads like that, you know, as if that's going to stop people taking drugs. Well, also the problem is, you know, people like a buzz. That's the weird thing. That's drugs, alcohol, all that sort of stuff. But the dilemma for the Mexicans is the following, right? Mexicans living in poverty, right? The percentage of Mexicans living in poverty is 26 % of the total population, right? So that means there's always an incentive for young lads in particular and young girls to get involved with the cartels.

34:10David McWilliams: Because there is that outside chance that you get to the top. You become the kingpin. Now, interestingly, the other problem with Mexico is that inequality is endemic. So the top 1 % of Mexicans who are incredibly rich own 40 % of the country's wealth. But are they the cartels? And they are a combination of the cartels and, of course, the elite business class and the elite political class at the very, very top of Mexican society. So what the Mexicans are trying to do now is what they call the kingpin strategy. They go after the very tops of the cartels, trying to actually get the Pablo Escobars of this world.

34:54David McWilliams: You'll probably... But there's always somebody. Some of the names like El Mencho, and you hear these names, El Capo, and all these names. Yeah, yeah. But there's always somebody to take their place. Well, that's the problem. And I mean, if you think that these cartels have just multiplied themselves, it doesn't matter, as you say, you chop the head off, the thing mutates, you get another one. Yeah. It's the Hydra. It is the Hydra. It is the Hydra. And until the demand for drugs in the United States diminishes, which it is not doing, there will always be significant suppliers. And if they're not the Mexican cartels, it used to be the Colombian cartels, it might be the Venezuelan cartels.

35:38As you said, in the case of Belgium, it's the Albanian cartels. But what it is, is mafias, which are, it's interesting, largely based on the mafia model in Italy, families. It's still very much sort of a clannish, tribal behavioral, you know, and the cartels are located in certain areas and they're linked together with accents and rural customs and this sense of us against them. You know, like in Ireland, there'd be an offaly cartel or something. Roscommon. Yeah, a Roscommon cartel. And they'd be all bonded by being Roscommon, lads. So it's the same, something very, very similar. But again, what you find is, we've spoken about the cartel economy, but we'll end also with the fact that the real Mexican economy is growing.

36:27And it's growing because the United States has such weird trade and tariff policies that American capital continues to flow into Mexico in huge numbers, despite all the cartels. And again, what that means is that you can live a vaguely separate life as well as... But if America and Trump wants to bring back all the manufacturing, particularly the car manufacturing and assembly plants over there, they want to bring it back to the states, will that not hollow out the industry base there? So John, Mexico is a significant beneficiary of American capital. Because number one, it's cheaper. But number two, over the last 25, 30 years, the Mexicans have built up a huge industrial economy, feeding the United States.

37:20And that is operational. whereas what Trump is trying to do is kickstart an American economy that has been moribund for 30 years. They've lost the skills, they've lost the technology, they've lost the networks. The Mexicans have all this. So the Mexicans are doing quite well. So given that this is a series about the World Cup or based on the World Cup, what is the relationship then like between Claudio Scheinbaum? Claudia Scheinbaum. Yeah. It means shiny tree, John. Actually, you mean shiny branch. Does it? In Spanish? In Yiddish. In Yiddish. She's Jewish. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

38:03She's the first Jewish leader in Mexico ever. And that's really interesting, actually. But what's her relationship with Trump like? It must be the fact that she's Jewish might help. It could help, but she's a lefty, right?

38:15David McWilliams: So Trump doesn't like this. Right. Oh, he's conflicted. In the, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he did the usual, she's a beautiful woman. Into the usual stuff, right? But briefly, for most of Mexico's history, it has been run by a political organization called the PRI. Yeah. Okay? Which, for Irish audiences, is a bit like Fianna Fáil. Right. It's a populist Catholic party, could be in bed with the rich and the poor, could be nationalist, could be cosmo, whatever you're having yourself. Right. Okay? And Sheinbaum comes from a different tradition. She comes from the left-wing tradition in Latin America. She is the leader of a party called Morena, which is a left of center party.

38:58Now, left of center people in America, in Latin America, are defined by one thing, which is a hatred of the gringo, right? This is a really deep part of Latin American political culture.

39:12David McWilliams: So the PRI were able to do deals with everybody and they were, as I said, kind of Charlie Haughey type Fianna Fáil-y lads, right? These crowd, the Morena, are much closer to Cuba, much closer to Venezuela, much closer. When I say closer, they're not allies of, but their DNA is Latin American, what they call as Bolivarian politics. Bolivarian based after Simon Bolivar, the man who brought independence to Latin America against the Spaniards. So you know the way we in Ireland have our kind of anti-colonial shtick. The Latin Americans have that too. And of course, her party would be very much part of that tradition.

39:54And that would put her on a complete collision course with the Donald. Yeah, you would think so. And over Venezuela, over Cuba, these are areas that her party would be supportive of the Cubans, would be supportive of the Venezuelans. But she needs Trump. And ironically, Trump needs her. because in a way she is the leader of the only army that can in some way reduce or stem the flow of drugs to the United States. So in a way Trump kind of needs to be nice to her. And on the other hand she needs Trump because what Trump has done with Mexicans has been he has insulted them, he has besmirched them, he has degraded them, he has humiliated them, He has said, build a wall.

40:43He has pointed the finger at Mexicans and said, you are the problem. You are from the shithole economies, right? And so Mexican-American relations are probably at an extreme low ebb now. On the street, people feeling. But Scheinbaum, as the president, has to still deal with this guy. So in a way, she's probably like the rest of the world, kind of holding her nose, trying to make sure she doesn't do anything except flatter him. But on the other hand, her deep political tradition would be very much so. For example, when Trump, and we'll end here, talks about the Monroe Doctrine, 1823. We did it a few weeks ago.

41:24So the Monroe Doctrine basically says America from the Arctic, the tip of Canada, all the way down to Tierra del Fuego is the United States back garden. Yeah. and all these countries in and around America, no matter be they Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Canada, are subservient to Washington. And therefore, in the big, big geopolitical play, the Western Hemisphere, which is the Americans, is owned by the United States. Now, that is the essential playbook of Trumpism, which is why we got Venezuela, which is why we got Greenland, all that sort of stuff. In the middle is Mexico. Yeah. It's a huge country.

42:09Yeah. As I said, one of the largest economies in the world, 130 million people, which is about half the size of the United States. Yeah. In terms of population, well, maybe a little more, maybe one third, it's a huge place. So what you'll see is that constantly, she will be negotiating with him. But if the United States goes down this road of the Monroe Doctrine, what the United States will then be on, will be on a collision course with these big Spanish-speaking Latin countries. Now, the irony, and we'll kind of leave it here, is the Monroe Doctrine was conceived as the United States siding with the little guy against the Spanish colonists.

42:54So it basically said, Spain is the colonial power interfering with the rights and expectations of Latin American countries. We will kick them out and we will support you in an anti-colonial drive. But the irony is, that's what the Monroe Doctrine 1823 looked like. The Monroe Doctrine a la Donald looks like neo-colonialism all over again. And that's where the friction point is. But we will leave it, John, on the basis of, I hope Mexico do extremely well. Could you imagine the crack in Guadalajara, or Mexico City, you know, or down the Chiapas region. Because the Mexicans are football mad. They're a football mad country.

43:4073 % of Mexicans consider themselves fans of the Mexican teams. One of the highest in the world. And wouldn't it be amazing if they did well? Because it would just enliven the whole thing. I'll leave you with one last story. Football is life. Football is life. That's from Ted Lasso. But I mean, one last story. Yeah. The last time the World Cup was in Mexico, 1986. Right. Diego Maradona. Oh, yeah. He just single-handedly dragged an average Argentinian team to the summit and won the World Cup in an extraordinary display of Latin flair and romance and ability and essentially the love of football.

44:33Yeah. You know, and it was in Mexico in 1986. The question is, and we leave it out to the punters, does a Latin American team win this time around? And if so, will it be Brazil, Argentina, or could it possibly be Mexico? So we leave it there.

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