MEXICO CITY — President Biden and Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador had a bumpy start to talks on Monday when what were supposed to be some brief opening pleasantries devolved into a contentious debate over the history of U.S. support for Latin America.
Biden, López Obrador and a phalanx of cabinet members and advisers had just sat down in the ornate National Palace at the start to discuss working together on trade, fentanyl interdiction and migration — ahead of Tuesday's North American Leaders' Summit with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
López Obrador told Biden that the United States had done little to support development in Latin America since President John F. Kennedy's "Alliance for Progress" spending in the early 1960s.
"This has been the only important thing, really, that has been done in terms of cooperation for development in our continent in more than half a century," said López Obrador.
"This is the moment for us to determine to do away with this abandonment, this disdain and this forgetfulness for Latin America and the Caribbean," he said.
Biden took issue with that description
Biden took issue with López Obrador's characterization of U.S. support. Straying from his prepared remarks, he noted that the U.S. government has spent "tens of billions of dollars in the hemisphere" over the past 15 years, and said he had secured agreements from G-7 countries to support infrastructure projects in the region.
"The United States provides more foreign aid than every other country, just about combined, in the world — to not just the hemisphere, but around the world," Biden told López Obrador.
"Unfortunately, our response just doesn't end in the Western hemisphere: it's in central Europe. It's in Asia. It's in the Middle East. It's in Africa," he said. "I wish we could just have one focus."
Biden has had a lot of face time with López Obrador on this trip
Biden is known for putting a lot of stock in developing personal relationships with world leaders.
So far in office, he has spent more time with Trudeau at meetings of the G-7 and G-20 and NATO, than with López Obrador, who chose to boycott a big regional summit hosted by Biden in Los Angeles last summer.
An Oval Office meeting last summer with López Obrador also saw the leftist leader hit on some politically touchy issues, like U.S. gasoline prices.
The White House took pains on this trip to accommodate one of López Obrador's domestic political issues, landing Air Force One at Felipe Ángeles International Airport instead of the more convenient and central Benito Juárez International Airport.
López Obrador was there to greet Biden on the tarmac.
Biden "had the opportunity to ride with President López Obrador from the airport back into town, which gave them the chance to just have a one-on-one chat on kind of how they're seeing the world right now, what's on their minds," Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters. "I think they both got a lot out of it," he said.
Nearshoring is on the agenda for Tuesday
Biden is slated to meet with Trudeau on Tuesday before the three leaders sit down together.
One big issue on the agenda is how the three nations can work together on 'nearshoring' to reduce their reliance on China.
"In our ports on the Pacific, we still see how more ships full of merchandise are arriving, and this is something that's growing, and they're coming from Asia," López Obrador said. "Couldn't we produce in America what we consume? That's what we're asking. Of course we could," he said.
