Biden tries to reset relationship with Mexican president

Trying to undo Trump agenda, U.S. taking softer approach to immigration

WASHINGTON—As U.S. President Joe Biden looks to dismantle the last administration’s hardline immigration agenda, he worked Monday to build a partnership with someone who found an unexpected understanding with Donald Trump: Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

Biden and Lopez Obrador met for a virtual bilateral meeting, with immigration, the coronavirus pandemic and climate issues on the agenda. Looming large was how the two leaders would get along in what has become an increasingly complicated relationship.

“We haven’t been perfect neighbours to each other,” Biden acknowledged in brief remarks at the start of his video conference meeting with the Mexican president.

Lopez Obrador, for his part, told Biden he was thankful the new president was “willing to maintain good relations for the good of our people in North America.” The Mexican president also gave a wink to a rueful observation attributed to Jose de la Cruz Porfirio Diaz Mori, the Mexican general who served seven terms as the country’s president, about the two countries’ relationship: “Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the U.S.”

“I can now say ‘It’s wonderful for Mexico to be close to God and not so far from the United States’” Lopez Obrador said.

Lopez Obrador came to the meeting with his own checklist of priorities, including pressing Biden to give pharmaceutical company Pfizer permission to sell his country vaccine produced in the U.S., something that Canada has also requested from the White House.

Ahead of the meeting, White House officials reiterated Biden remained focused on first vaccinating U.S. citizens before turning his attention to assisting other nations. Biden, in a brief exchange with reporters at the start of the meeting, said the two leaders would discuss vaccines.

The two sides following the meeting issued a joint statement pledging greater co-operation on addressing migration, the coronavirus pandemic and climate change. The Mexican government in a separate statement added the two sides also agreed to crack down on migrant trafficking.

As a candidate, Trump referred to Mexicans as rapists. The Republican’s signature campaign promise was building a “big, beautiful wall’ across the length of the southern border. And leaked conversations showed Trump hectoring Lopez Obrador’s predecessor, Enrique Pena Nieto, against publicly saying Mexico would never pay for a southern border wall.

But Lopez Obrador appeared to reach a one-issue understanding with Trump: Mexico stopped the flow of Central American migrants trying to reach the U.S. border, and Trump often appeared to turn a blind eye to just about every other facet in the relationship.