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Mexico (AFP) – US President Joe Biden wanted to strengthen ties with Mexico and Canada during the North American summit in Mexico City, underlining: “We are stronger and better when we work together, the three of us.”
“I am grateful that you are my partners, not even friends,” he added, along with his Mexican counterpart Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The Democratic president of the United States stressed that the goal of the summit is to keep North America “the most competitive, prosperous and resilient economic region in the world”.
Mexican President Lopez Obrador announced the launch of a “joint commission” to replace imports in North America with the aim of “strengthening our economic and trade relations”.
White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said ahead of the summit that regional integration reduces our “dependence” on “other parts of the world with whom we don’t necessarily share the values we share with our partners in North America “.
The US president wants to make North America “an engine for the production of clean energy”.
Biden adopted a consensual tone before reporters and failed to address Washington’s concerns about Mexico, which wants to increase the state’s contribution to energy production at the expense of US private investment, according to Washington.
Trudeau is an advocate of free trade
In the presence of his Mexican counterpart, Biden cited the record flow of migrants crossing Mexico to the United States, a cause of tension between the two countries.
He thanked President López Obrador for “welcoming” immigrants rejected by the United States to Mexico.
A key issue between the United States and Mexico is the powerful industrial opioid fentanyl, responsible for thousands of fatal overdoses in the United States, and against which Biden has promised to step up the fight.
Liberal Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau defended the tug-of-war trade deal between the three countries, in place since 1994 and renewed in 2021.
“This deal has helped grow our economies and provided millions of new jobs. The free trade agreement has attracted investors from all over the world to our continent,” Trudeau said.
The Mexican president hailed “a new cooperative relationship that leaves behind the dominant interventionist tendency”.
Lopez Obrador had invited Washington to stop “contempt for Latin America and the Caribbean”, underlining: “President Biden, you hold the key to significantly improving relations between all the countries of the American continent”.
Before going to the US president, Lopez Oberdaur described Justin Trudeau as a “great ally of Mexico” and thanked him for adopting temporary entry visas that allowed the reception of “25,000 Mexicans” in Canada, he said .
“This is a path that should be taken. This is organized immigration,” Lopez Obrador underlined, in a veiled criticism of Joe Biden’s immigration policy.
But the Mexican president thanked his American counterpart because Mexicans who live and work in the United States “are not subject to harassment and are not subject to police raids as they were in the past”.
“You are the first American president in a long time who hasn’t built an inch into the wall” erected on the border between the two countries, “I thank you for that, even if conservatives don’t like it.”
On the sidelines of the summit, Amnesty International called on the three officials to make refugee and migrant rights “a top priority” during their talks and to “stop applying inhuman common policies on migration”.
Mexico welcomed the measures announced by Biden on January 5 regarding immigration, allowing up to thirty thousand people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to immigrate to the United States per month.
© 2023 AFP
