WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden’s first calls to foreign leaders went to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador at a tense moment for US relations with its North American neighbors.
The president of Mexico said on Saturday that Biden had told him that the US would send $ 4 billion to help development in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala – countries whose hardships led to tidal migration through Mexico to the United States. .
López Obrador, who spoke by telephone with Biden on Friday, said the two discussed immigration and the need to address the causes of why people migrate.
Mexico has halted recent caravan attempts by Central American migrants to cross Mexico.
Biden’s call to Trudeau, also on Friday, came after the Canadian prime minister publicly expressed disappointment this week over Biden’s decision to issue an executive order to halt construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. The long-running project is expected to transport about 800,000 barrels of oil a day from the tarmac beach of Alberta to the Gulf Coast of Texas through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma.
A senior Canadian government official told the Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private conversation.
The White House said in a statement that Biden acknowledged Trudeau’s disappointment with his Keystone decision.
Biden’s call with López Obrador was also at a tense moment – days after the Mexican president accused the US Drug Enforcement Administration of providing charges against drug trafficking against the country’s former defense minister.
While Mexico continues to promise to block mass movements of Central American migrants to the U.S. border, there was no shortage of potential hotspots between the two countries.
Mexico has demanded the return of former Secretary of Defense General Salvador Cienfuegos after he was arrested in Los Angeles in October and threatened to restrict U.S. agents in Mexico if he was not returned. U.S. prosecutors have agreed to drop charges and return Cienfuegos to Mexico.
But Mexico passed a law restricting foreign agents and waiving their immunity anyway, and published the U.S. case file against Cienfuegos, which quickly removed Mexican prosecutors from all charges.
López Obrador said in a statement on Friday that the conversation with Biden was “friendly and respectful”.
The White House said Biden mentioned that he was reversing the draconian immigration policy of the previous government. ‘
Before the call on Friday, Trudeau told reporters that he would not allow his differences with Biden over the project to become a source of tension in the US-Canada relationship.
“It’s not always going to fit in perfectly with the United States,” Trudeau said. “This is the case with any president, but we are in a situation where we are much more focused on values and focus. I am very much looking forward to working with President Biden. ”
Biden signed the executive order to halt construction of the pipeline, hours after he was sworn in.
“The late Keystone XL pipeline permit will not be in line with the economic and climate imperatives of my administration,” Biden’s executive order said.
Critics say the growing activity increases greenhouse gas emissions and threatens Alberta’s rivers and forests. On the American side, environmentalists have expressed concern about the pipeline – it would cross the Ogallala aquifer, one of the largest underground deposits of fresh water – which would be too risky.
Proponents of the project, however, say it will create thousands of jobs on both sides of the border.
The project was proposed in 2008, and the pipeline highlighted the tension between economic development and limiting fossil fuel emissions that cause climate change. The Obama administration rejected it, but President Donald Trump revived it and was a strong supporter. Construction has already begun.
According to a second senior Canadian government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Biden and Trudeau also discussed the prospect that Canada would supply the COVID-19 vaccine from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Canada received all its Pfizer doses at a Pfizer factory in Puurs, Belgium, but Pfizer informed Canada that they would not receive any doses next week and would receive 50% less than expected over the next three weeks. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has publicly asked Biden to share a million doses made at Pfizer’s Michigan plant.
The US federal government has an agreement with Pfizer in which the first 100 million doses of the vaccine produced in the US will be owned by the US government and will be distributed in the US. Anita Anand, the Canadian federal procurement minister, said the doses coming from the Michigan plant are for distribution in the United States.
The two leaders also spoke at length about trade, defense and climate issues. Trudeau also raised the issue of two Canadians detained in China in apparent retaliation for the arrest of a top executive of Huawei, who was arrested on a U.S. extradition request in Canada, according to the prime minister’s office.
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