The US Senate’s ratification of the USMCA trade deal last week lifted four years of nerve-racking uncertainty for Mexico. A beaming President Andrés Manuel López Obrador told Mexicans to look forward to better-paid jobs and more investment. The leftwing populist leader has argued that the revamped trade deal with the US and Canada will help revive an economy where investment and job creation are at their lowest in a decade, growth has plummeted to zero and consumer and business confidence are under strain. However, eliminating US president Donald Trump’s threats to slap tariffs on Mexico or scrap the quarter-century-old North American Free Trade Agreement, while necessary, is unlikely to be enough to reignite investments. The lacklustre economy is also largely due to Mr López Obrador himself, business leaders and analysts say. “We have seen with profound concern how the perception of uncertainty and hostility to private investment has increased,” Claudia Jañez, president of the Executive Council of Global Companies and Latin American chief of US chemicals group DuPont, told journalists a day before the Senate vote. “It is taking a great deal of work to convince our headquarters to invest in Mexico.” Ms Jañez’s remarks were particularly noticeable because local business leaders have generally bent over backwards to placate a politician many of them openly distrusted before his landslide win in December 2018. “USMCA isn’t the only thing Mexico has to do to recover investment,” said Beatriz Leycegui, a former foreign trade under-secretary. “The government needs to send other types of messages — certainty over public policies, respect for the rule of law and contracts.” Ms Leycegui added: “USMCA is without a doubt very important but what could have more impact is creating a more propitious environment for investment to flow.” Mr López Obrador, a nationalist leftwinger, has clashed repeatedly with businesses — despite his insistence that he respects and needs private investment. He scrapped the $13bn Norman Foster-designed Mexico City airport project, that was one-third built, shortly before taking office — a move analysts said was designed to send the unequivocal signal that “I’m the boss now”. He has U-turned on some of his predecessor’s signature reforms, including halting energy auctions, and last year forced a renegotiation of contracts with international gas pipeline companies, the costs of which he deemed exorbitant. The struggling state-run power utility CFE is now preparing steps that could dismantle private participation in the electricity market and curb renewable energy projects. To the delight of the business community, Arturo Herrera, now finance minister, told the Financial Times in March that a lack of cash would delay the president’s pet project, an $8bn refinery in his home state of Tabasco. But the Mexican president publicly contradicted him the next day. Stop-and-go decisions and contradictions abound in a government where market-friendly personalities like Mr Herrera and chief-of-staff Alfonso Romo are often overruled by radical ideologues like Rocío Nahle, the energy minister, or CFE chief Manuel Bartlett, who styles himself an “ultra-nationalist”. “The problem right now is what are the rules?” complained the head of one big Canadian company investing in the country. “A few years ago, with the reforms, there was some kind of path for opportunities. Now we’re not sure what the opportunities are.” With some analysts forecasting that Mexico’s economy may not even grow 1 per cent this year despite growth in the US — which, thanks to Nafta, is its partner in crucial shared manufacturing supply chains in automobiles and electronics — Mr López Obrador should be changing tack. But he appears unlikely to. With enviable approval ratings of more than 70 per cent, he sees nothing broken that needs fixing. “I don’t see how we can move forward under this model,” the Canadian chief executive said. “We need a crisis . . . This government isn’t doing anything to entice investment. All they’re good at is cancelling stuff.”