The telephone conversation between presidents Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Joe Biden was characterized by the two countries, as always, as “cordial” and “constructive.” No less was expected, because these types of talks are not confrontational, although relations between the two countries, like today, are at a bad time where the balance, due to the asymmetric relationship, is on the side of the United States. Biden has been very cautious with López Obrador, which has been censored in Washington and surprised the Mexican’s critics at home. The reason for this seems to be the end of former President Donald Trump’s exceptional policy of processing asylum requests in Mexican territory -known as Title 42-, which coincides with the extraordinary increase in Mexican migration to the United States, which produced 221,000 arrests in the last month.
Biden needs López Obrador to stop migration, which costs him enormously in political-electoral terms, and López Obrador seems to believe that he has Biden in his hands, and that he can do whatever he wants. In the short term he is getting away with it, but he is paving the way for injuries and grievances. The synthesis of this is the ambassador of the United States in Mexico, Ken Salazar, who has been involved -and he has allowed it- in the nationalist rhetoric about the electrical reform, which led to a group of businessmen asking the secretary of State, Antony Blinken, to remove him because he was not defending the interests of his country, affecting the private sector.
Blinken withstood the pressure, and although Salazar has been changing his actions, he has lost the confidence of various US sectors. Biden did not change Salazar, perhaps for the same reasons that stopped the White House trade representative, Katherine Tai, when faced with the violations of the North American trade agreement that she denounced due to the electricity law -and López Obrador’s refusal to speak of the topic with John Kerry, responsible for climate change -, was going to impose tariffs on several products. Biden, according to people who know in detail what happened in Washington, told him that everything related to Mexico had to be coordinated and supervised by Blinken.
Publicly, things are broadcast differently to minimize damage. For example, the White House spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, responding last Friday in the briefing on whether Biden had threatened López Obrador with raising tariffs to strengthen immigration controls, said that “it was not the way they approached” the things, and that the US president had not threatened the Mexican “in any way.”
Using the word “threat” to describe what Biden did not do was a reminder of what Trump did do in 2019 by threatening to impose tariffs if López Obrador did not stop Central American immigration, and that between his threat and the negotiation, it was enough less than seven days for the Mexican government to give in on everything it wanted. That moment was remembered by Trump two Saturdays ago at a political rally, which shook the National Palace. López Obrador’s response minimizing Trump’s statements were part of a strategy proposed by Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard to immediately get out of the problem, but the president asked him for detailed information on what issues that compromised the president and his government could begin to come out to public opinion.
Ebrard offered to give him the report before leaving for Washington, in a sudden trip as a result of the Friday phone conversation between Biden and López Obrador. At that time, López Obrador yielded to pressure from Trump and agreed to send thousands of soldiers to the border with Guatemala to stop migration to the United States and Ebrard, according to the former ambassador in Washington, Marta Bárcena, was the one who negotiated -apparently with behind the back of the Mexican president-, the “Stay in Mexico” program, which supported Title 42. What other concessions López Obrador made to Trump in those times are unknown, but they concern the Mexican president so much, that perhaps they help to understand why the honey that he throws on the controversial former head of the White House every time he talks about him.
Public statements require context to understand what they mean. For example, although the emphasis of the talk was migration, they touched on an issue that bothers Washington, that López Obrador has not commercially sanctioned Russia for the invasion of Ukraine, although it is epidermal, because in strategic terms, his government accepted technical assistance. of the United States to increase its security capacity in cyberspace, whose objective is that Russian hackers do not interrupt North American supply chains.
Similarly, as the White House reported in the statement on the talk, “they reaffirmed their vision… of having the most competitive and dynamic region in the world,” and on “their shared goals” in the economy, climate change, and energy, which is a contradiction with the sayings and positions of López Obrador. In practice, López Obrador is at the opposite end of the spectrum to Biden, but that doesn’t matter to the president of the United States. The statement reveals this by specifying that their conversation was in line with the High-Level Economic Dialogue, which just a few days before in Mexico City ratified the reference framework of the bilateral relationship signed in September of last year, which maintains in force that Above all are the strategic needs of the United States, which includes geopolitical limits on Russia and China.
It is clear that López Obrador has two open fronts. One is with Trump, because of the alarm caused by his threatening words at the National Palace, and the other is with Biden, even though the president thinks he can blackmail without consequences. Biden’s prudence does not mean acceptance of his positions. We are seeing it. He lets him say what he wants, but fundamentally, he continues to squeeze López Obrador.
#Blackmail #useless #Biden