Mexico's president urges big companies to keep jobs, pay taxes

Mexico's president threw himself into a new confrontation with businesses on Wednesday, accusing big ones of not paying taxes and upbraiding others for laying off workers in the coronavirus crisis. Relations between President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and business leaders have deteriorated sharply in recent weeks as discontent over his management of the economy grows.

Calling small companies "heroic," Lopez Obrador told his regular morning news conference that nearly 347,000 jobs had been cut between March 13 and April 6, mostly in companies with more than 50 people. "We don't want the bad behavior of a few to be taken up by others. We're still in time to urge, respectfully, for the ones doing this to improve," Lopez Obrador said, displaying a list of the companies responsible for the highest numbers of layoffs.

"How is it possible that from one day to the next a company has no workers? They lay off 800? It's incredible," he said. Lopez Obrador also said he would consider making public a list of 15 large companies that owe a total of 50 billion pesos ($2 billion) to tax authorities, and ask the head of Mexico's powerful CCE business lobby, Carlos Salazar, to speak with their owners.

"If they pay us, we would have many more resources to help small and medium-sized companies," he said. "There's no doubt that small is beautiful." The head of Mexico's social security institute, Zoe Robledo, said the job losses since Mexico implemented social distancing measures in mid-March to combat the novel coronavirus were significantly more than in the same period last year.

Lopez Obrador has said he plans to lift the economy out of the coronavirus crisis by creating 2 million new jobs, boosting loans for small businesses and doubling down on public sector austerity. Mexico's most powerful business lobbies have deemed such plans insufficient, saying more actions are needed to protect jobs and companies.

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