Team Trump plays nice in first visit to Mexico president-elect
MEXICO CITY: Top officials from US President Donald Trump’s administration met Friday with Mexican Presidentelect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, with both sides upbeat on the potential for a turning point in the countries’ troubled relationship.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo led the high-level delegation to meet the leftist leader known as ‘AMLO’, who will take office on December 1 after winning a landslide election victory.
Trump’s son-in-law and senior aide Jared Kushner, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin were also along for the one-day trip, which included meetings with Mexico’s outgoing President Enrique Pena Nieto and Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray.
Pompeo was all smiles as he met Lopez Obrador on the leftist’s own turf — an aging Mexico City house with scant security where his transition team has its offices.
“We look forward to working with President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador,” Pompeo said later at a press conference.
“It was a priority for me to begin building our relationship with him and his team.”
Lopez Obrador’s pick for foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, also said the 40-minute meeting had been positive.
“It was a frank, respectful and cordial dialogue. It was a successful first conversation,” he told a separate press conference.
“I believe we can be reasonably optimistic that Mexico will be able to find a basis for understanding and have a better relationship with the United States.”
There was heavier-than-usual security outside the house. Swarms of journalists were kept at bay, along with a handful of antiTrump protesters who shouted, ‘Racists! Cowards!’ at the US delegation.
US-Mexican relations have been strained since Trump won the 2016 presidential election after a campaign laced with anti-Mexican insults, attacks on the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) and vows to make Mexico pay for a wall on their common border.
Since then, US tariffs on Mexican steel and aluminum, Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy on undocumented immigrants, and Pena Nieto’s two abrupt cancellations of visits to Washington have only added to the tension.
Lopez Obrador, 64, pledged during the campaign to “put (Trump) in his place.”
But both men say they had a positive phone call the day after Mexico’s July 1 election, and Lopez Obrador has invited Trump to his inauguration.
Some commentators have drawn parallels between the Republican billionaire and the Mexican leftist, despite their ideological differences: both are free trade skeptics who mobilized a disgruntled base with antiestablishment campaigns.
Trump has even reportedly taken to calling Lopez Obrador ‘Juan Trump’ in private. — AFP