Mexico leader, Trump meeting
López Obrador says visit is about economy, being neighbors
MEXICO CITY — For his first foreign trip as president, Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador was traveling to Washington on Tuesday to meet with President Donald Trump.
The visit, coming just four months before U.S. elections, has many Mexicans cringing.
But López Obrador has had a warm relationship with Trump.
He likes to point out that more recently Trump helped Mexico reach a deal with other oil-producing nations to cut production and aided Mexico in obtaining more ventilators to face the coronavirus pandemic. Both presidents talk about a blossoming friendship.
López Obrador hints at the real reason for the trip when he reels off U.S. economic statistics — the size of the U.S. pandemic stimulus package, the number of jobs the U.S. got back in June.
Mexico’s economy was in recession before the pandemic, has shed about 1 million jobs since and is forecast to contract this year by as much as 10 percent.
“This helps us by being neighbors,” López Obrador said Tuesday, before departing. “This is about the economy, it’s about jobs, it’s about well-being.”
López Obrador insists that he has no desire to be drawn into U.S. domestic politics. He says he’s going to mark the new United States-mexico-canada Agreement, which took effect July 1.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau decided not to attend the meeting.
On Monday, López Obrador added another reason.
“If we have a good relationship with the United States government, we are going to avoid mistreatment” of Mexicans living in the U.S., López Obrador said.
López Obrador has repeatedly raised the importance of the remittances sent home by migrants and praised them as heroes.
For Trump, replacing the “disastrous NAFTA trade deal” was one of the biggest promises he made to his supporters in 2016. Trade was perhaps the single biggest reason he ran for president in the first place, Trump says.
From López Obrador’s perspective, a good relationship with whoever occupies the White House is Mexico’s best policy.
“We’re going to offer our opinion, but we’re not planning for confrontation,” López Obrador said Tuesday. “We’re going to look to convince, we’re going to seek understanding.”