The administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto has presented plans to ramp up the country’s two-year austerity drive in its 2017 budget, pledging more spending cuts and a return to a primary budget surplus for the first time since 2008. On 8 September, newly appointed Finance Minister José Antonio Meade presented the 2017 draft budget to Congress, which will be discussed by lawmakers in the coming months. Meade, who took office on 7 September after Luis Videgaray resigned from his post as a result of the fallout from the meeting between Donald Trump and Peña Nieto on 31 August, has sent a clear message: the government is willing to cut spending as much as necessary to consolidate Mexico’s weak fiscal position as soon as possible. The decision to appoint Meade for the job was welcomed by the markets as he is seen as likely to continue the essence of the government’s economic policy trajectory, which explains why the reaction of the financial markets was fairly muted.