| | |  Americas & Beyond | January 2009 
Obama Praises Calderon, Urges Cooperation With Mexi
 Julianna Goldman & Mark Drajem - Bloomberg
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| | President-elect Barack Obama meets with Mexico's President Felipe Calderon in Washington, Monday, Jan. 12, 2009. (AP/Charles Dharapak) | |
President-elect Barack Obama said President Felipe Calderon of Mexico is “moving his country in a direction that is unprecedented” on energy policy and said the U.S. relationship with its southern neighbor is “critical” to the economy.
The “friendship between the U.S. and Mexico has been strong,” Obama told reporters today after meeting with Calderon at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington. “I believe it can be even stronger.”
Calderon said he looks forward to stronger ties with the U.S.
“The more secure Mexico is, the more secure the U.S. will be,” he said.
Neither man mentioned any discussion of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, which includes Canada. Obama said during the primary race for the Democratic presidential nomination that he wanted to renegotiate the treaty to include stricter labor and environmental provisions. He softened his position during the general election campaign.
Yesterday, the president-elect said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week” that reviving the U.S. economy will require scaling back on his campaign promises. That could mean pushing aside any changes in Nafta.
Three Obama advisers, speaking on condition of anonymity last month, said he will order a study on Nafta and then seek longer-term negotiations with Mexico and Canada on how to change it.
Mexico is the third-largest U.S. trading partner, exchanging about $347 billion in goods last year.
Last November, Calderon warned Obama against trying to renegotiate Nafta, saying that restricting commerce would only encourage illegal Mexican immigration to the U.S.
“The day access is closed, workers will jump over whatever river or wall you put there,” Calderon told business leaders then at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Lima, Peru, where leaders of 21 nations met.
“I hope that the next U.S. government won’t make this mistake,” he said. Nafta should be expanded to include the free movement of workers, he said.
To contact the reporters on this story: Julianna Goldman in Washington at jgoldman6(at)bloomberg.net; Mark Drajem in Washington at mdrajem(at)bloomberg.net |
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