Biden reaches out to neighbors
Canada and Mexico express friendship despite differences
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s first calls to foreign leaders went to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador at a strained moment for the U.S. relationship with its North American neighbors.
Mexico’s president said Saturday that Biden told him the U.S. would send $4 billion to help development in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala — nations whose hardships have spawned tides of migration through Mexico toward the United States.
Lopez Obrador, who spoke with Biden by phone Friday, said the two discussed immigration and the need to address the root causes of why people migrate.
Mexico has stopped recent attempts by caravans of Central American migrants to cross Mexico.
Biden’s call to Trudeau, also Friday, came after the Canadian prime minister last week publicly expressed disappointment over Biden’s decision to issue an executive order halting construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. The long-disputed project was projected to carry some 800,000 barrels of oil a day from the tar sands of Alberta to the Texas Gulf Coast, passing through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma.
Biden told Trudeau that by issuing the order he was following through on a campaign pledge to stop construction of the pipeline, a senior Canadian government official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private conversation.
The White House said in a statement that Biden acknowledged Trudeau’s disappointment with his Keystone decision.
Biden’s call with Lopez Obrador also came at a tense moment — days after the Mexican president accused the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration of fabricating drug trafficking charges against the country’s former defense secretary.
While Mexico continues to pledge to block mass movements of Central American migrants toward the U.S. border, there has been no shortage of potential flashpoints between the two countries.
Mexico demanded the return of former Defense Secretary Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos after he was arrested in Los Angeles in October, threatening to restrict U.S. agents in Mexico if he wasn’t returned. U.S. prosecutors agreed to drop charges and return Cienfuegos to Mexico.
But Mexico passed a law restricting foreign agents and removing their immunity anyway, and went on to publish the U.S. case file against Cienfuegos, whom Mexican prosecutors quickly cleared of any charges.
Lopez Obrador said in a statement Friday that the conversation with Biden was “friendly and respectful.”
The White House said Biden mentioned “reversing the previous administration’s draconian immigration policies.”
Trudeau told reporters before the call that he wouldn’t allow his differences with Biden over the pipeline project to become a source of tension in the U.S.-Canada relationship.
“It’s not always going to be perfect alignment with the United States,” Trudeau said. “That’s the case with any given president, but we’re in a situation where we are much more aligned on values and focus. I am very much looking forward to working with President Biden.”
Biden signed the executive order to halt construction of the pipeline just hours after he was sworn in.
But proponents of the project say it would create thousands of jobs on both sides of the border.
Biden and Trudeau also discussed the prospects of Canada being supplied with the covid-19 vaccine from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer’s facility in Kalamazoo, Mich., according to a second senior Canadian government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.
Canada has been getting all its Pfizer doses from a Pfizer facility in Puurs, Belgium, but the company has informed Canada it won’t get any doses this week and will get 50% less than expected over the next three weeks. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has publicly asked Biden to share a million doses made at Pfizer’s Michigan facility.
The U.S. government has an agreement with Pfizer in which the first 100 million doses of the vaccine produced in the U.S. will be owned by the government and will be distributed in the U.S.