AMLO seizes U.S.-owned port in final week as Mexico's leader

financialpost.com:

Mexico finalized plans to take control of a port and quarry owned by Vulcan Materials Co. on its Caribbean coast, deepening tensions days before the nation’s president leaves office.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s administration declared the land south of the resort cities of Cancun and Playa del Carmen a natural protected area, according to a filing in the federal gazette published hours after U.S. lawmakers sought to dissuade such a move.

The move prevents the Alabama-based construction company from extracting limestone at a site it has been developing for decades. Its shares fell 1.2 per cent to US$249.46 in New York on Tuesday morning.

“The expropriation of our company owned land and port is yet another escalation and is a new violation of Mexico’s commitments under North American trade agreements,” Vulcan said in a statement. “This unlawful measure will have a chilling and long-term effect on US-Mexico trade and investment relations.”

The company previously said that the López Obrador government’s actions are illegal, and that it would add the most recent measures to an ongoing arbitration case.

This week’s expropriation marks another move against business interests by Lopez Obrador, a staunch nationalist who finishes his single six-year term this month. A new congress was sworn in Sept. 1 after June congressional elections gave the president’s party large majorities in both houses. It has since approved a judicial overhaul that’s drawn criticism from international investors.

President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, who takes office Oct. 1, hasn’t commented publicly on the Vulcan issue since her landslide victory. But a year ago she said she hoped the company would accept the government’s offer to purchase the