President Trump is once again confounding his critics and laying the groundwork for a better relationship with our southern neighbor, Mexico.  In place of the impulsive recklessness Trump-haters attribute to him, he is carrying out a nuanced approach to seeking actual solutions with a new and unusual leader embarking on a six-year term as president of Mexico, a political office with far more power than that of the POTUS.

There were predictions of doom aplenty from the hysterical leftists and racialists who insist that Trump called all Mexicans rapists when he objected to some of the people violating our borders.  This meant, in their view, that he is a racist bigot that despises Mexicans.

Incoming Mexican president Andrés Manuel López-Obrador, or AMLO, is far saner and gives every sign of being a man who can cut through the political rhetoric and deal with the realities of a complex bilateral relationship.  Now he will receive visits from two of the heaviest of Trump administration foreign policy heavyweights: secretary of state Mike Pompeo and presidential counselor and son-in-law Jared Kushner.  These are men with a history of breaking old frameworks and forging (or attempting, as with North Korea now) new frameworks.  Perhaps you recall that Trump's so-called "Muslim ban" purportedly had poisoned relationships with the Islamic world just as Jared Kushner was meeting with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman as he began the transformation of the Desert Kingdom into a modern nation.

Signs are that a deal may be cooking that would break away from the trite political correctness on both sides of the border and cut through the stale deadlocks of the past.  Mark Stevenson of the Associated Press reports on the way U.S.-Mexican relations are being handled by Trump as the new president prepares for his inauguration:

[O]n Tuesday, Lopez Obrador said the wall did not even come up in a telephone call that he had with Trump on July 2, the day after his landslide election victory.

"President Trump has been very respectful.  He hasn't brought up that topic," Lopez Obrador said of the wall.  "And how nice that it hasn't come up."

"I thank him a lot, I say so sincerely, for the respectful treatment we have received from President Trump and the U.S. government," Lopez Obrador said.  "We are interested in having a good relationship with the people and government of the United States."

"Lopez Obrador, who is to take office Dec. 1, called Friday's meeting "very good news."

"He said immigration, development and the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement will be the principle topics." data-reactid="51" type="text">He said immigration, development and the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement will be the principle [sic] topics.

"We know that the best way to tackle the migration phenomenon and the problems of safety ... is to spur development in Mexico," Lopez Obrador said.

Trump understands that reflexive anti-Americanism has been Mexico's ruling class's excuse for keeping too many of its nation's people poor.  There are parallels with the American globalist elite's treatment of our own working class that I suspect Trump sees.  Realists also understand that a long border between two nations of vastly different standards of living is the ultimate cause of border incursions.

Image credit: http://www.ngb.army.mil via Wikimedia Commons.

America's standard of living, and the social welfare measures that accompany it, is an irresistible lure for people who feel that opportunities at home are unpromising.  If Mexico raises its economic level closer to that of the Yanquis, fewer people will want to undertake the risky and expensive journey to El Norte.  And if Mexican wages rise, the competitive threat from low-wage Mexican competition recedes.

It is a win-win for Mexico and America for that nation to succeed, and succeed big time, as Trump would put it.

I strongly suspect that this is the proposition Jared Kushner is presenting to AMLO, which SecState Pompeo will amplify with diplomatic expertise.

Lots could go wrong, of course.  Nothing is certain when two nations are involved.  But Trump is bringing fresh eyes to a problem that has been stubbornly persisting.