Biden, López Obrador and Trudeau meet in Mexico City

US President Joe Biden, center, accompanied by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, arrives for a meeting with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador at the National Palace of Mexico City, in Mexico City, Monday, Jan. 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

MEXICO CITY (AP) — United States President Joe Biden; Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were meeting Tuesday for a series of talks on immigration, trade and climate change in an attempt to ease the tensions that have divided North America.

The three-way meeting is held almost every year, although there was a break during the presidency of Donald Trump in the United States. It is often referred to as the “three friends summit,” a reference to the deep diplomatic and economic ties between the countries.

But the leaders were still out of step, especially in their efforts to manage a surge of migrants and go after smugglers who profit by convincing people to make the perilous journey to the United States.

In addition, Canada and the United States accuse López Obrador of breaching a free trade agreement by favoring state-owned power plants over power plants built by private and foreign investors. For their part, Trudeau and López Obrador are concerned about Biden’s efforts to encourage manufacturing in the United States, amidst reservations that their neighbors may be left behind.

The centerpiece of the summit will be several hours of talks with the three leaders, although Biden had planned to start the day with a bilateral meeting with Trudeau. That meeting was unlikely to be as eventful as his talk with López Obrador on Monday.

During that meeting, the Mexican president challenged Biden to improve life throughout the region and stated that he “has the key” to do so.

“This is the moment to end this oblivion, this abandonment, this disdain for Latin America and the Caribbean,” added López Obrador.

Biden responded by defending the spending of billions of US dollars in aid around the world over the past 15 years, saying that “unfortunately, our responsibility does not end with the Western Hemisphere.”

It was an especially acrimonious dialogue after the smiles, hugs and handshakes of the two leaders before the cameras.

Biden and López Obrador have not had the best of relations in the last two years. The Mexican leader did not hide his admiration for Trump and last year he did not attend the American summit in Los Angeles because Biden did not invite the authoritarian governments of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

However, there have been attempts to bring positions closer. Biden made the gesture of flying into the new Felipe Ángeles International Airport, a cherished project of the Mexican president, despite the fact that it has been a source of controversy.

The airport, which is expected to cost $4.1 billion to complete, is more than an hour’s drive from the city center, has few flights and until recently had intermittent potable water service. Yet it is one of the big projects that López Obrador is rushing to finish before he finishes his term next year.

The United States and Mexico have also reached an agreement on a major immigration policy change, which Biden announced last week.

Under the plan, the United States will send 30,000 Cuban, Nicaraguan, Venezuelan and Haitian migrants returned from the United States to Mexico each month, and in return Washington will offer temporary work visas each month to the same number of people of those four nationalities if they meet certain requirements. , including arriving by plane.

For various reasons, it is difficult to send back migrants from those four countries who come to the United States illegally.

On Monday, before the summit began, López Obrador said he would consider accepting more migrants than had been announced.

Mexico will likely require an increase in the number of people authorized to work in the United States to receive more expelled migrants.

“We support all these measures to give options, give alternatives,” said López Obrador.

Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, warned that nothing was closed yet.

“What we need is to see how the program announced last week works in practice, what adjustments need to be made to that program — if any — and then we can talk about next steps,” Sullivan said.

The number of migrants crossing the US-Mexico border has grown dramatically during Biden’s first two years in office. During the year ending September 30, migrants were stopped on more than 2.38 million occasions, the first time that the figure exceeded two million.

It was expected that after his first trip to Mexico as president, Biden would follow suit with a visit to Canada, although it had not yet been planned.

A Canadian senior official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the matter said Canada was working with the US government to arrange a visit in the near future.

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Associated Press writers Mark Stevenson and María Verza in Mexico City, Rob Gillies in Toronto, and Chris Megerian and Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.

US President Joe Biden is greeted by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador upon his arrival at the National Palace in Mexico City, Mexico, Monday, Jan. 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)