President Trump welcomed Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to the White Home on Wednesday for conferences on commerce, the financial
President Trump welcomed Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to the White Home on Wednesday for conferences on commerce, the financial system and immigration — topics way more suitable with Mr. Trump’s re-election marketing campaign themes than the spreading coronavirus.
The assembly is supposed to have a good time the official July 1 enactment of a revised North American Free Commerce Settlement ratified by the US, Canada and Mexico. Mr. Trump has cited the deal as a signature achievement, though economists say it would have marginal results.
Mr. López Obrador has additionally performed an essential function in Mr. Trump’s relentless marketing campaign to limit immigration throughout the southern U.S. border, ordering extra vigorous enforcement on Mexican territory to forestall border crossings into the US.
And the go to — the second to the White Home by a overseas chief for the reason that coronavirus shutdown in March — gives a welcome distraction for Mr. Trump and Mr. López Obrador, who’ve each been criticized for insufficient responses to the pandemic.
The 2 leaders have little in widespread ideologically — Mr. López Obrador is an avowed leftist — however Mr. Trump has used America’s great financial leverage, together with threats of tariffs and even a complete border closing, to strain the Mexican chief.
Mr. López Obrador stylistically shares a few of Mr. Trump’s bombast however eschews shows of wealth, together with the usage of a personal presidential aircraft. He flew industrial to Washington from Mexico Metropolis on Tuesday, his first journey overseas since his landslide 2018 election, connecting by means of Atlanta.
After afternoon conferences, the leaders will signal a joint declaration earlier than eating with Mexican and American enterprise executives. A senior administration official stated the occasion amounted to a state dinner “lite,” throughout the limits of coronavirus precautions.
On Wednesday morning, Mr. Trump’s re-election marketing campaign issued an announcement hailing the revised NAFTA deal, often called the usM.C.A., calling it a “stark distinction” to “Joe Biden’s failed globalism.”
A Canadian spokeswoman stated that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had chosen to not journey to the US this week to have a good time the usM.C.A. due to a scheduling battle with a session of Parliament on Wednesday. However relations between the Trump administration and Canadian officers have turned chilly since final month, when American officers stated their Canadian counterparts should voluntarily restrain their very own metallic exports or face tariffs once more.
The united statesM.C.A. formally went into impact on July 1, however American officers have emphasised that each Mexico and Canada nonetheless fall wanting fulfilling a number of of the pledges they made below the pact.
Trump administration officers have criticized Mexico’s continued refusal of American biotech merchandise, like genetically modified corn, and its unfair therapy of American information media corporations.
And Mexico has solely partly carried out the foremost reforms to its labor system that the deal required, which had been geared toward lifting wages and bettering working situations in Mexico, to place American and Canadian employees on extra even footing with Mexican rivals.
Ana Swanson contributed reporting.