Joe Biden and Andrés Manuel López Obrador had started the North America summit with an upset.

The Mexican President on Monday accused the American President of having done little to support Latin American countries since the 1960s.

It is time to end "this neglect, this contempt and this forgetting".

Biden replied that "tens of billions of dollars" had been allocated to the region over the past 15 years.

America provides more foreign aid than any other country - just in the whole world.

Sofia Dreisbach

North American political correspondent based in Washington.

  • Follow I follow

On Tuesday afternoon, when Biden, López Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met for the final press conference, they were clearly in agreement.

"The three of us are real partners," Biden said after a two-hour meeting.

In today's world, it is clear that one cannot turn one's back on common problems.

The Mexican host also spoke of a "sincere friendship".

Behind the scenes, the mood during the conversation must have been tense.

Mexico and the United States are struggling to control illegal migration at the border.

In addition to human smuggling, the smuggling of drugs such as fentanyl is also booming.

Biden said on Tuesday that the high number of migrants is affecting Mexico like America.

Together they want to work together in a way "that respects the laws of our countries and protects the human rights of migrants".

Last week, the US President presented new measures for orderly migration, according to which Mexico will take back 30,000 illegally entered migrants a month.

However, López Obrador did not make any concrete commitments for a higher number of withdrawals at the summit.

"Build reliable value chains"

Another key topic at the meeting was economic cooperation between the three countries that signed the USMCA free trade agreement in 2018, the successor to NAFTA in 1994. Trudeau said on Tuesday many countries around the world were becoming "less and less reliable partners".

Also when it comes to technology and energy.

The partnership between their three countries is all the more important.

"We discussed how to build reliable value chains for everything from critical minerals to electric cars to semiconductors on this continent," Trudeau said.

Work is also being done to make the economy more climate-friendly.

But there are also differences on economic issues that were not discussed on Tuesday.

Canada and America accuse López Obrador of violating the trade agreement on energy policy.

Mexico favors the state-owned Mexican utility over power plants built by foreign or private investors.

Canada and Mexico, on the other hand, are concerned about Biden's anti-inflation law, which supports the domestic economy with billions in investments.

For Trudeau, free trade with America is particularly important because nearly eighty percent of Canada's exports go there.

After bilateral talks between Biden and Trudeau on Tuesday, the White House said the two had discussed security and defense and reaffirmed their commitment to supporting Ukraine.

Biden also announced a visit to Canada in March, the first since taking office.

The last North America Summit took place in Washington in November 2021;

there is no regular rotation for the meeting.

However, the last visit by an American president to Mexico was nine years ago;

Donald Trump did not travel to the neighboring country during his tenure.