US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo held talks on Friday with Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, voicing President Donald Trump’s hope to strengthen ties between the people of the neighboring countries.
His visit at the head of a delegation of senior officials was intended to signal the “deep importance” Trump gives to what has been an increasingly strained bilateral relationship, said the diplomat.
“We know there have been bumps in the road between our two countries but President Trump is determined to make the relationship between our peoples better and stronger,” Pompeo said at the start of the 50-minute meeting with the leftist Lopez Obrador, who will take office on December 1.
Lopez Obrador, for his part, handed Pompeo a letter addressed to Trump with his plans to reset the relationship, focusing on trade, immigration, development and security, said Marcelo Ebrard, the president-elect’s pick for foreign minister.
"It was a frank, respectful and cordial dialogue. It was a successful first conversation," he told a press conference.
"I believe we can be reasonably optimistic that Mexico will be able to find a basis for understanding and have a better relationship with the United States."
Trump's son-in-law and senior aide Jared Kushner, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin were also along for the one-day trip, which included meetings with Mexico's outgoing President Enrique Pena Nieto and Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray.
US-Mexican relations have been strained since Trump won the 2016 presidential election after a campaign laced with anti-Mexican insults, attacks on the North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA and vows to make Mexico pay for a wall on their common border.
Since then, US tariffs on Mexican steel and aluminum, Trump's "zero-tolerance" policy on undocumented immigrants, and Pena Nieto's two abrupt cancellations of visits to Washington have only added to the tension.
Previous attempts by officials to pour oil on the waters of an increasingly turbulent bilateral relationship have been undone by intemperate tweets from the US president himself.
Lopez Obrador has said that he wants good relations with the United States. Despite ideological differences with Trump, the two men share nationalist and populist leanings.
But the president-elect’s plans to shake up Mexico’s war on drug cartels, including by reducing security cooperation with the United States, could put him on a collision course with Trump.
Speaking to the media after the meeting with Lopez Obrador, Pompeo said he had “respectfully reinforced” the importance of border security.
“Americans must be able to see improvements that better protect our national sovereignty,” he said, adding that it was important to have “strong, fair and reciprocal” trade ties.
Ebrard said the border wall was not mentioned in the talks, adding that he was “reasonably optimistic” that ties could improve between the two neighbors in coming years.
After Pena Nieto met the delegation, he issued a statement calling for the quick reunification of immigrant children separated from their parents under Trump’s “zero tolerance” border policy.
Outside the house in Mexico City’s scruffy but hip Roma neighborhood where the meeting with Lopez Obrador was held, a small group of protesters, including immigrants deported from the United States, shouted slogans.
“I was deported. My crime? Being brown,” one placard read. Maria Garcia, 60, held up another that read: “Where are the migrant children?”
Lopez Obrador, 64, pledged during his presidential campaign to "put (Trump) in his place."
But both men say they had a positive phone call the day after Mexico's July 1 election, and Lopez Obrador has invited Trump to his inauguration.
Migration may be one area where Trump and Lopez Obrador can find common ground.
They both want higher Mexican wages, and Lopez Obrador has spoken of fostering economic development in Mexico and Central America so that "people only migrate if they want to, not because they have to."
