Politics: AMLO´s visit to Washington has little to show

MEXICO - Report 18 Jul 2022 by Guillermo Valdes and Francisco González

When President López Obrador announced plans for an official work trip to Washington after he shunned President Biden’s Summit of the Americas, it wasn’t immediately clear exactly what officials in both countries expected to accomplish. No specific agenda was ever announced, and a US official was quoted off the record saying the meeting was intended to build upon shared commitments reached at the summit in Los Angeles and make some progress in resolving problems U.S. firms have faced in Mexico's energy sector. And in late June, Interior Minister Adan Augusto Lopez said the US was going to announce 300,000 work visas for Mexicans and Central Americans but that was not confirmed after the recent meeting in the joint statement.

Now that the two-day visit has concluded we do not know much more. Despite talk of the work visas and the Mexican president's announcement last month that he intended to present his US counterpart with a plan for solving migratory issues throughout the Americas, it is not clear to what extent either issue was even discussed. The two leaders dispensed with any joint press conference and canceled the afternoon meeting at which teams from both administrations were supposed to discuss issues in greater depth.

Mexico has provided scant details about what was discussed or even AMLO’s meeting with US and Mexican business owners. And it was left to the White House to issue a “President Biden and President Lopez Obrador Joint Statement” that just restated broad goals both countries had already agreed upon and was devoid of any new specifics. In short, AMLO’s first face-to-face meeting with the US president was long on reaffirmations of good intentions and short on any new action.

While there were numerous indications that both men may have perceived the event mainly through the prism of domestic politics in their respective countries, the time is ripe to better position Mexico in a context marked by major geopolitical shifts, especially the intensified competition between China and the United States and including the enormous possibilities the trend toward nearshoring provides.

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