Joe Biden met the leaders of Canada and Mexico at the White House on Thursday, with the three agreeing to work towards expanding visas for temporary workers and deepening regional supply chains.
In a joint statement late on Thursday, the three North American leaders said they intended to talk about expansion plans and lessons learnt around temporary work visas.
“We are looking to promote regular migration pathways through labour mobility programmes, especially in the agricultural sector,” the statement read.
The first trilateral meeting between the three leaders since 2016 came amid tensions between the allies. Mexican and Canadian officials have complained that Biden’s plan to offer tax credits on US-made electric vehicles, part of his $1.75tn spending package, breaks international trade rules.
The Canadian prime minister’s office said Justin Trudeau had spoken to lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to “impress upon these key legislators the importance of bilateral co-operation”.
Biden tried to smooth over the frictions on Thursday, calling relations with Canada “one of the easiest relationships that we have”, in remarks at his meeting with Trudeau. Mexican officials said in a press conference the summit had been very positive and marked a new era in the relationship.
The three leaders said they would work to strengthen economic competitiveness in North America, as officials try to co-ordinate with allies to navigate the global supply chain crunch and compete with China.
“As supply chains constrict globally, we seek to deepen our economic ties . . . while raising labour and environmental standards,” the statement said.
Washington has been pushing to secure the supply chains of critical industries such as semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and EV batteries to reduce over-reliance on countries such as China.
Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador said North America should be producing what it used rather than the “paradoxical” situation of filling Pacific ports with goods from Asia.
Canada in particular is a rich source of minerals critical to the manufacturing of electric vehicles, such as lithium, nickel, cobalt and graphite.
Migration, particularly from Central America through Mexico, to the southern US border has been a core issue between the two countries. López Obrador had been pushing to try to open up more legal pathways for workers.
“To grow we need a labour force which, in truth, neither the United States nor Canada has enough of. Why not look at the demand for workers and open migration in an orderly way?” he said Thursday.
On Covid-19, the three leaders said they had an agreement to co-ordinate vaccine donations to meet Latin America and the Caribbean’s unmet vaccine needs. A senior US official said before the talks that public health experts would determine the timing and number of doses.
Meanwhile, the US has expressed concerns about Mexican energy reforms, which sector experts say would make electricity more expensive and dirty.
A US official said before the talks that the Biden administration “closely tracks” Mexico’s proposed energy reforms and was “prepared for the two presidents to discuss it”. The final statement said the three countries were committed to accelerated renewable energy deployment.