Joe Biden is straining ties with two of his neighbors and “friends.”
“We are stronger and better when the three of us work together”: The US president focused on strengthening ties with Mexico and Canada on Tuesday in Mexico City.
Joe Biden, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Justin Trudeau in Mexico City on January 10, 2023.
AFP
“I’m grateful to have both of you as allies, and I’ll include them as friends,” he told his Mexican counterpart Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The goal of the summit? North America should be “the most competitive, prosperous and resilient economic region in the world,” according to Democrats whose subsidies to the US economy worry the EU.
Mexican President López Obrador announced the launch of a “joint committee” on “import substitution in North America” in order to “strengthen our economic and trade relations”. Regional integration “reduces our dependence on the rest of the world, whose values we don’t necessarily share with our partners here in North America,” White House national security adviser Jack Sullivan said before the summit.
The White House president wants to make the North American continent “a motor in clean energy production.” According to Washington, he did not back down in front of the press in a more unanimous way the United States’ grievances against Mexico, which he says strengthens the state’s role in energy production.
Trudeau is a champion of free trade
Along with his Mexican guest, Joe Biden’s record influx of immigrants crossing Mexico into the United States — historic for him — has fueled tensions between the two countries. He thanked President López Obrador for “getting in Mexico” migrants who could not enter the United States. Another key U.S.-Mexican substance: fentanyl, a synthetic drug that causes thousands of overdoses in the U.S., and which Joe Biden has vowed to deepen the fight against.
Canada’s Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has defended a free trade agreement between the three countries that has been in place since 1994 (renewed in 2021). “This agreement has boosted our economy and created millions of good jobs. Free trade has attracted investors from around the world to our continent,” Justin Trudeau said, switching from English to French.
In contrast, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a left-wing nationalist, hailed the move as “a new relationship of cooperation, abandoning hegemonic intervention.” On Monday, “AMLO” (his initials, his nickname) asked Washington to put an end to the “hatred of Latin America and the Caribbean”: “President Biden, you have the key to open and significantly improve relations between all countries of the American continent.
Before speaking to the US president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador called Justin Trudeau “the best ally of Mexico City” and thanked him for implementing temporary visas that, according to him, allowed him to welcome “25,000 Mexicans” to Canada. “This is the path to follow. This is orderly migration,” asserted Andrés Manuel López Obrador in a blunt critique of Joe Biden’s migration policy.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador thanked President Biden because Mexicans living and working in the United States “unfortunately are not persecuted and no longer suffer from police raids as happened in other times”. “You are the first president of the United States who has not built even one meter of wall on the border between the two countries,” he outlined. “Even if it doesn’t please the conservatives, I thank you for that.”
On the sidelines of the summit, Amnesty International called on the “Three Friends” to give “top priority” to the rights of refugees and migrants during their talks and to “stop the implementation of general inhumane policies on immigration”.
Mexico applauded new immigration measures announced by Joe Biden on Jan. 5 that would allow a maximum of 30,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to immigrate to the United States each month.
AFP
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