This week is a make-or-break week for NAFTA renegotiations.
If an agreement isn't reached then what will be left is a ‘Zombie NAFTA’.
The Trump Administration has thrown two wrenches into the mix that neither Canada nor Mexico want to deal with.

Discussions in Washington will center on rules of origin that govern what percentage of a car needs to be built in the North American Free Trade Agreement region to avoid tariffs, the dispute-resolution mechanism and U.S. demands for a sunset clause that could automatically kill the trade deal after five years.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer warned last week that if the talks took too long, approval by the Republican-controlled Congress may be on "thin ice." The aim is to complete a vote during the "lame-duck" period before a new Congress is seated after November's congressional elections.

The "thin ice" they are speaking of is politicians having to vote for NAFTA against the wishes of the voters in an election season. If donors throw enough money at them, they'll do it, but they don't want to.
The second reason to rush through this agreement is Mexico's upcoming presidential election.

Mexico holds its presidential election on July 1 and the front-runner, leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, says he wants a hand in redrafting NAFTA if he wins...
"The positive momentum on the rules of origin appears to be counterbalanced by the opposite movement on labor wage treatment proposals," said Flavio Volpe, president of Canada's Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association.

"Labor wage treatment" means higher wages for workers, and that would defeat the entire purpose of NAFTA, which is to drive down wages through disempowering workers.
López Obrador and Donald Trump are polar opposites on almost everything, but they do agree on that one issue.

"I hear President Donald Trump is proposing to improve salaries of Mexican workers. On that topic we can agree," Lopez Obrador said at an event of the American Chamber of Commerce of Mexico. Nafta "in as much as possible, should seek to level salaries, because wages in our country are very low."
In contrast, Mexico’s current administration has resisted setting salaries at a certain level or lifting Mexico’s minimum wage for industries like car output as policy in Nafta talks, maintaining that such decisions should belong to companies and should be determined by the market.

Wanting higher wages for workers is a bridge too far for Mexico's ruling elite. That may not sound like much, but this is Mexico, where a political candidate is assassinated every four days.
The ruling elite take these things seriously.

Two Mexican media outlets have cut ties with a prominent journalist after he appeared to call on supporters of presidential hopeful Andrés Manuel López Obrador to assassinate the leftwing candidate.
Ricardo Alemán tweeted Saturday: “John Lennon was killed by a fan. Versace was killed by a fan. Selena was killed by a fan. Now’s the time chairos” – using a word many on Mexico’s right use to disparage supporters of López Obrador, candidate of the leftist Morena party in July’s election.

In 1994, Luis Donaldo Colosio ran for the presidency.

Speaking passionately, Colosio called for greater transparency and democracy, for aid to poor farmers and for respect for the indigenous communities, for aid to workers facing unemployment and low wages, for opportunities for the young, for a greater role for women, and criticized government abuses of power.
The speech gave Colosio sudden popularity with Mexico’s underdogs. His speech represented a break with President Carlos Salinas’s neoliberal politics and a return to nationalist, social-welfare policy. PRI leaders and the PRI-controlled labor unions shouted out “Colosio Traitor!” and “Death to Colosio!” at his rallies.

On March 23, 1994, Colosio was assassinated by his own party because he threatened the ruling elite.
It later came out that the head of Colosio’s team of bodyguards had worked for both Mexican security services and been a CIA agent.

If Obrador ever was a radical socialist, like his detractors say he is, he isn't any longer.
He's much more like a Bernie Sanders-style New Deal Democrat.
Obrador ran in 2006, and lost by just 0.56%.
There was widespread fraud, and there were enormous protests that followed, but to no avail.

The thing is that the ruling elite can rig a close election, like the one in 2006.
Because polls have margins of error, people will generally accept the results.

But Obrador is leading by around 20% in the polls. That's too much to rig, and still expect anyone to think the results are legitimate. There would be political violence. Maybe even a popular revolt.
Simply assassinating Obrador would almost certainly cause widespread violence as well.
So the ruling elite has been thinking outside the box.

With some polls now showing frontrunner López Obrador (AMLO) increasing his support to well over 40 percent in the five-way contest, talk is in the air of one or more candidates dropping out and backing the strongest contender against the leader of the National Movement for the Regeneration of Mexico (Morena) party and standard bearer of the Together We Will Make History coalition — who is viewed as a dangerous, radical populist by his hardcore opponents.
...But given the political fragmentation, deep rivalries and personal antagonisms driving Mexican politics in 2018, forging a big anti-AMLO coalition less than two months before election day might be an impossible task — or simply too late in the game.

It probably is too late to form a pro-establishment coalition.
So the ruling elites have tried a different tactic.

Less than two months ago, Anaya insisted he might seek to jail the current President Enrique Peña Nieto for corruption should he prevail. But last week AMLO charged that Anaya met last month with a group of prominent businessmen from the Mexican Business Council (Consejo Mexicano de Negocios, CMN), which includes Mexico’s 10 richest magnates, to discuss “impunity” for the president in exchange for the PRI supporting Anaya in order to defeat AMLO.

Anaya denied this, but a video had surfaced of him meeting the prior Friday with high-level executives of Mexico’s second largest bank, Citibanamex, global giant Citibank’s Mexican subsidiary, in which he said that he is willing to “build” an alliance with Peña Nieto so that Meade would step down to prevent AMLO from winning.

It appears that Mexico's ruling elite is not just corrupt, but they are incompetent as well.
That means Obrador will win in July.

But it also means that if Obrador cuts into the ruling elite's profits, they will try to kill him and take their chances with what comes next. It'll be there only card to play.
If the NAFTA negotiations stall until after July, what Obrador decides to do will determine his presidency and his life.