President Joe Biden highlighted North American collaboration on the coronavirus pandemic, climate change and immigration in his first phone calls with Mexican and Canadian leaders.
In phone calls Friday with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Biden pledged to strengthen regional cooperation, according to reports.
In the call with Trudeau, the first foreign leader to speak with the new president, the two leaders discussed the collaboration on vaccines and acknowledged that the efforts of the two countries are bolstered by existing exchanges of medical personnel and the flow of critical medical supplies. according to Canadian reports.
Although Trudeau hailed Biden’s presidency as a “new era” for relations between the countries, he complained that on his first day of office, Biden had demolished an oil pipeline connecting the two countries. According to a White House statement, Biden acknowledged “Trudeau’s disappointment with the decision to revoke the license for the Keystone XL pipeline.”
Speaking to Lopez Obrador, the Mexican president addressed the contribution of Mexican migrants in the US, saying that the best way to manage migration was to create economic development in poor regions from which migrants left, according to a statement from the Mexican. Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The call comes at a time of tension over the US federal investigation into former Mexican Defense Secretary Salvador Cienfuegos, which was dropped in November. US prosecutors had claimed that Cienfuegos was the head of the H-2 drug cartel.