Mexico's economy secretary resigns

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Tatiana Clouthier has resigned as Mexico’s secretary of the economy, underlining President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s persistent difficulties in maintaining links with the business community.

Clouthier resigned Thursday in an emotional speech in which her voice broke as she thanked the president, but in which she gave no specific reason for her departure.

Her brother Manuel Clouthier, also a politician, wrote in his Twitter account that while “I have not talked with her, my opinion is that the issue of the National Guard must have played a big role in her decision.”

López Obrador plans to turn over the National Guard — originally proposed as a civilian-controlled federal force — to the army. López Obrador has drawn criticism for increasingly entrusting law enforcement, infrastructure and transport projects to the military.

Clouthier is a former member of the conservative National Action Party and is well known among northern Mexico’s industrial elite.

Clouthier had been involved in handling a number of U.S. trade tensions. Mexico is currently locked in a controversy with the United States over plans to favor Mexico’s state-owned electrical utility over private and foreign companies.

Other cabinet members with ties to the business community had previously resigned, including former chief-of-staff Alfonso Romo, who López Obrador described as his “main liaison” to the business sector.

Carlos Urzua resigned as treasury secretary in 2019.

López Obrador has enacted policies to raise minimum wages and promote the kind of big, government-owned enterprises that his predecessors had trimmed.

Clouthier left National Action in 2005, and in 2018 served as López Obrador's campaign manager.