President Joe Biden highlights North American cooperation on the coronavirus pandemic, climate change and immigration in his first telephone conversations with Mexican and Canadian leaders.
According to reports, Biden on Friday in telephone conversations with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador promised to strengthen regional cooperation.
In the call with Trudeau, the first foreign leader to speak with the new president, the two leaders discussed ‘collaboration on vaccines’ and acknowledged that the two countries’ efforts were strengthened by the existing exchange of medical staff and the flow of critical medical supplies. ‘. according to Canadian reports.
Although Trudeau saw Biden’s presidency as a ‘new era’ for relations between the two countries, he complained that Biden had scrapped an oil pipeline connecting the two countries on his first day in office. According to a White House statement, Biden acknowledged “Trudeau’s disappointment with the decision to revoke the Keystone XL pipeline permit.”
In the conversation with Lopez Obrador, the Mexican president addressed the contribution of Mexican migrants in the US and said the best way to manage migration is to create economic development in poor areas from which migrants leave, according to a statement from the Ministry of foreign affairs in Mexico.
The call comes at a time of tension over the US federal investigation into former Mexican Secretary of Defense Salvador Cienfuegos, who was released in November. U.S. prosecutors allege that Cienfuegos was the head of the H-2 drug cartel.