{"id":3748,"date":"2021-04-29T14:37:21","date_gmt":"2021-04-29T20:37:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/accesstomexico.mx\/blog\/?p=3748"},"modified":"2021-04-29T14:37:21","modified_gmt":"2021-04-29T20:37:21","slug":"what-will-kansas-city-southerns-merger-mean-for-railroads-in-mexico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/accesstomexico.mx\/blog\/what-will-kansas-city-southerns-merger-mean-for-railroads-in-mexico\/","title":{"rendered":"What will Kansas City Southern\u2019s merger mean for railroads in Mexico?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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MEXICO NEWS DAILY<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The haunting, fading Doppler effect of a receding train whistle on a hot summer night is romantic, even though it is saying goodbye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mexico\u2019s train whistles are tooting hello these days as a good old-fashioned donnybrook is breaking out, now that there are two highly qualified foreign bidders for Kansas City Southern (which holds Mexico\u2019s foreign route concessions).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first bid, for US $25 billion, came from a Vancouver company, the second US $33.7 billion from a Montreal enterprise. Both bids are tangible support that at some time in the future Canada, Mexico and the United States will be a dominant economic, if not political, entity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Coca-Cola and beer \u2014 now Dutch, then aviation \u2014 now American. And railroads next?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m a train buff and have ridden the rails in China and the United Kingdom, as well as Romania, Ecuador, Peru, Czechoslovakia, Canada and, of course, Mexico and Guatemala.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Mexico, on a trip from California to Mexico City and Guatemala, I even toasted a cheese sandwich on the locomotive\u2019s boiler of the president\u2019s train as I shared the engineer\u2019s cabin with an oilcan-bearing, pinstriped-overalled veteran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I showed the trackside ragamuffins how to turn Guatemala\u2019s outsized one-Quetzal coin into a mini-Frisbee before we derailed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mexico\u2019s President L\u00f3pez Obrador is a train buff too, having already pledged that he will retire to his family farm in Palenque, Chiapas, the new loading point for the Refugee Special known unaffectionately<\/em> as The Beast, which passes north close enough to the United States border to tempt fate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enough of nostalgia, except to hope that future train buffs may have the opportunities that I\u2019ve had. On to investment dynamics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turning to my eight years as an analyst for investment in Latin America, I\u2019d dismiss the economic risk of investing in railroads in Mexico. Developing nations need railroads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this does leave political risk, which is high, not just for Mexico, but for the United States as well. As a recent Reuters article points out, the most recent permitted railroad merger of size in the U.S. was in 1994.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This leaves Mexico, whose distant train history includes a 1930s nationalization of foreign-owned railroads and whose more recent history involves disputing foreign contracts in the petroleum industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, how far does AMLO\u2019S railroad buff-ness go?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carlisle Johnson. (2021). What will Kansas City Southern\u2019s merger mean for railroads in Mexico? M\u00e9xico.\u00a0Mexico News Daily<\/em>. Recuperado de\u00a0<\/strong>https:\/\/mexiconewsdaily.com\/opinion\/kcs-merger-and-mexico\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MEXICO NEWS DAILY The haunting, fading Doppler effect of a receding train whistle on a hot summer night is romantic, even though it is saying goodbye. Mexico\u2019s train whistles are tooting hello these days as a good old-fashioned donnybrook is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/accesstomexico.mx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/accesstomexico.mx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/accesstomexico.mx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accesstomexico.mx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accesstomexico.mx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3748"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/accesstomexico.mx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3750,"href":"https:\/\/accesstomexico.mx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3748\/revisions\/3750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/accesstomexico.mx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accesstomexico.mx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accesstomexico.mx\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}