(Mexico City) The United States and Mexico, linked by 3,000 km of borders and a free trade agreement that also includes Canada, meet on Monday for a “high-level” economic dialogue after recent tensions, during a whirlwind visit by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Posted at 4:24 p.m.
Arrived at midday in Mexico City, Joe Biden’s emissary spoke of “the shared threat of the production and trafficking of fentanyl”, a synthetic drug that is wreaking havoc in the United States, during a first meeting. with Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard.
MM. Blinken and Ebrard also spoke of “safe, orderly, human-faced” migration, according to a State Department statement.
“We are working with Mexico like never before to disrupt the multi-million dollar networks of human traffickers,” US Ambassador Ken Salazar said in a message on the first anniversary of his arrival in Mexico City this weekend.
“As the presidents have remarked [américain] Joe Biden and [mexicain] Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, we share the most important economic union in the world,” he also noted, saying that the United States “is investing $3.4 billion in infrastructure projects” along the border. .
MM. Blinken and Ebrard also discussed “regional efforts to support Haitians” and cooperation between Mexico and the United States to make the United Nations more “effective,” according to the State Department statement.
Mr. Blinken is due to meet Mr. Lopez Obrador and then co-chair a “US-Mexico economic dialogue” on strengthening trade relations between the two countries. Mexico is the United States’ second largest trading partner with some $725 billion in trade in 2021.
Beyond the institutional formulas, the two countries have the opportunity to return to their showdown within the United States-Mexico-Canada Free Trade Area (AEUMC).
In July, the United States, joined by Canada, denounced the energy reform promoted by Mr. Lopez Obrador to strengthen the Mexican public sector, to the detriment of foreign investment and renewable energies, according to Washington.
Monday morning in front of the press, the Mexican president hailed “an attitude of respect” in reference to a letter from Mr. Biden that he claims to have received recently.
Mr Lopez Obrador met Mr Biden in August in Washington after he snubbed the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles in June on the grounds that Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua had not been invited.