The President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum was at the Group of Twenty (G20) Leaders Summit and held meetings with the President of the United States, Joe Biden, and the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, in which the predominant themes were security, migration and economy, especially the trade agreement between the three countries (T-MEC).
Biden and Sheinbaum met for the first time in person after the President’s inauguration on October 1. In a 15-minute meeting, they talked about the fight against drug trafficking and the need to create better jobs, among other issues.
“The president expressed his congratulations (to Claudia) on her recent election and reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to building a prosperous North America with well-paying jobs. “The two leaders stressed the importance of maintaining cooperation on migration, security, to address the scourge of transnational crime, and economic issues, to build a strong bilateral partnership between the United States and Mexico,” the White House reported.
With the president of Canada, Justin Trudeauboth agreed on the need to preserve the T-MEC, in a context where some conservative politicians from Canadian provinces such as Ontario and Alberta have asked to exclude Mexico from the trilateral pact, accusing the country of being “the back door” for cheap merchandise from China.
“We talked about the good relationship between our people and governments. We agree on the good result of the T-MEC for North America,” Sheinbaum said.
In his interventions at the G20 summit, which is being held yesterday and today in Rio de JanuaryBrazil, the President proposed to reform the United Nations Security Council, with the objective that the UN has greater legitimacy in its decisions and achieve a more democratic vision of the world.
“The proposal is to expand the number of seats to regions that have been represented such as Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and small island states,” he emphasized. “Democracy, inclusion, freedom and justice guide this initiative.”
He added that the world is experiencing profound challenges in matters such as the environment and social justice. He called to stop the current wars in the Middle East and Ukraine. And he affirmed that the current international order has lost its effectiveness in offering solutions to these and other crises.
“The statement that ‘freedom is only in the market’ is a falsehood. What freedom? The freedom to starve? “That is not freedom, it is oblivion, it is dehumanization,” he said.
He also called on the great nations of the G20 to “build peace, fraternity and equality.” And he proposed a global reforestation program.
“It is absurd, meaningless, that there is more spending on weapons than to address poverty or climate change. We would reduce migration and hunger, if we only raised the word love above hate, the generosity of the humble and dispossessed person, above greed and the desire for domination,” concluded the President, who also had a meeting with the president of China, Xi Jinping.
Ask G20 to allocate 1% of military spending to reforestation
The President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, presented a proposal to launch the “largest reforestation program in history.” What does it consist of?:
- 1% of the annual military spending of G20 member countries would be allocated to plant new trees around the world.
- This percentage is equivalent to 24 billion dollars a year.
- According to the President, with this money 15 million hectares would be reforested, equivalent to four times the area of Denmark, or 30% of the territory of Sweden.
- Six million planters would be employed throughout the planet.
- Sheinbaum declared that his initiative will help two issues: mitigating global warming and rescuing many rural communities from poverty.
- The proposal is similar to the federal “Sembrando Vida” program, which invests $1.7 billion annually. According to the President, in six years of operations it has benefited 439 thousand Mexican families and 40 thousand more in Central America, planting more than 1.1 billion trees on one million hectares.
