US President, Joe Biden, and his Mexican counterpart, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, held a first cordial meeting this Monday in which both chose to interact on an equal footing after four years of ups and downs in bilateral ties.
“We see Mexico as an equal, not someone south of our border.” With that sentence, Biden set the tone for their first virtual meeting with López Obrador, a president who especially values respect for Mexican sovereignty.
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However, in view of López Obrador’s request to have anticovid vaccines, the team of the President Biden assured the United States. has no intention of sharing the supply of vaccines against Covid-19 from his country with Mexico.
However, Biden’s spokeswoman Jen Psaki said before the meeting that the White House had no plans to share its vaccine stockpile anytime soon, at least until it ensures that they are sufficient to immunize all Americans.
“No, President (Biden) has made it clear that he is committed to making vaccines accessible to all Americans. That is our focus.”, he indicated.
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However, the two leaders pledged to “work closely together” in the fight against pandemic, especially in terms of “information exchange and border policy development”, according to the joint statement.
The president (Biden) has made it clear that he is committed to ensuring that vaccines are accessible to all Americans. That is our focus
The Mexican president has questioned that vaccines where Mexico came from Pfizer and BioNTech are produced in a factory in Belgium, because the US has required its pharmaceutical companies to reserve production in its territory.
“Although Pfizer also produces vaccines in the United States, they are shipped to us from Europe”, López Obrador recalled this Monday.
In addition to the Pfizer dosageMexico has pledged 79.4 million from the British AstraZeneca, 35 million from the Chinese CanSino, 24 million from the Russian Sputnik V, 10 million from China Sinovac and 51.4 million from the program Covax of the World Health Organization (WHO).
Thereafter, “The next step is economic recovery, and that will ensure that our neighbors, Mexico and Canada, are tackling the pandemic in a similar way so that we can open our borders and rebuild better,” explained Biden, “but our focus, The government’s focus is to ensure that all Americans are vaccinated. ”
“And once we achieve that goal, we’ll be happy to talk about further steps,” stressed out.
Respect and equality
The Mexican president thanked Biden for his willingness to deal with his country on the basis of “ respect and equality, ” and recalled a famous statement by his country’s former president Porfirio Díaz, who said: “Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States.”
“Now I can say it’s great for Mexico to be close to God and not that far from the United States”, added López Obrador, to which Biden watched from the White House through a screen, because of the pandemic.
Those brief statements from both at the start of the meeting made it clear that they wanted to strengthen the ties so that they “get even better” in the future, in the words of López Obrador, who hoped to maintain a “constant dialogue” with Biden.
The virtual meeting contrasted with two other encounters: the meeting that Biden had last week with his other neighbor on the continent, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and the meeting that López Obrador shared with former US President Donald Trump in the United States last July. White. House.
Tuning in to migration issues
In a joint written statement, Biden and López Obrador they pledged to “promote migration policies that recognize the dignity of migrants and the need for orderly, safe and regular migration”.
They agreed to cooperate and with the governments of the Northern Triangle of Central America “the root causes of regional migration, improve migration management and develop legal migration pathways “, according to the statement distributed by the White House and the Mexican State Department.
The statement did not mention López Obrador’s plan to propose a deal to Biden Mexican workers can migrate to the United States legal, based on the Bracero program launched during World War II to make up for America’s labor shortage.
The White House has not ruled on this issue, but it is difficult to make it a priority as it is now plunged into a struggle to push through an immigration reform that would include a path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented migrants living in the US.
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Biden wanted to make it clear that he values the Spanish population of his country, of which “60% are Mexican-Americans, and they are an integral part of the story” of the nation, he stressed against López Obrador.
Three very different meetings
Personal harmony was clearly superior in those two appointments: Trudeau, who maintained a notoriously strained relationship with Trump, expressed relief at the return of the ‘leadership of the United States’ from Biden’s hand, in a statement at the end. of the meeting that the White House did not program in the López Obrador case.
The brief virtual encounter also paled in comparison to the extensive program that Trump dedicated last year to López Obrador, who praised the then US president, despite his anti-immigrant rhetoric and his pressure and threats of tariffs on Mexico.
And aside from the forms, both Biden and López Obrador gave indications that they wanted to advance the relationship in a pragmatic way, especially in the area of immigration, where there is more consensus: the Mexican leader applauds the American to stop building the border wall and the “Stay in Mexico” Program.
Silence on the electrical reform
While reaffirming their commitment to the Mexico, United States and Canada (T-MEC) agreement, they did not publicly report the Mexican electricity reform, which worries Washington as it benefits state-owned companies at the expense of private producers, with especially foreign and private producers of renewable energy sources.
Biden and López Obrador decided to restart the high-level economic dialogue interrupted during the Trump era, and agreed to “explore areas of cooperation” in the fight against the climate crisis.
The format of the meeting, through screens installed in their respective offices, did not lend itself to big warm gestures, but Biden wanted to show that he knew Mexico well, a country he visited four times while he was vice president (2009 -2017).
I even paid my respects to the Virgin of Guadaluperecalls Biden, who showed López Obrador the rosaries his son Beau wore when he died of brain cancer in 2015.
INTERNATIONAL SETUP
* With information from agencies
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