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President Joe Biden plans to pressure Mexico to combat the fentanyl epidemic after securing commitments from the Chinese to tackle the drug’s “precursor” chemicals that are ravaging the nation. Biden revealed his intention to raise the sensitive issue during friendly remarks with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador – with Biden even joking that his wife First Lady Jill Biden has a crush on the younger North American leader, 70.
Both men also referenced the immigration crisis, with Biden praising efforts related to “maintaining our borders” and both men calling for new “legal avenues” to enter the US. crime, and to address the opioid epidemic, including fentanyl, and when we talk privately, I want to tell you about my great conversation with Xi Jinping about that,” Biden told his Mexican counterpart.
Their meeting in San Francisco comes two days after powerful Chinese leader Biden said he still considers a “dictator” who has agreed to steps to limit production in China of precursor chemicals to the powerful drug. Those materials are shipped to Mexico and other Latin American countries, where the drug is contributing to rising overdose levels in the U.S., including some that Biden said this week have occurred in his home state.
Biden raised the sensitive issues of drugs and immigration after complimenting his left-wing guest on a joke about a banquet at the APEC conference Biden is hosting here in San Francisco. “I told you sitting next to my wife, you were so captivating I was afraid she likes you more than she likes me now,” Biden joked. Lopez Obrador, better known as AMLO, was complimentary to his host and kept his remarks uncharistically brief as the president prepared to fly to Delaware.
“And I would also like to express and say that he is the first president in the United States in recent times who has not built walls. It is true, and we must continue to support each other, so migration is an option and not forced,” he said.
Speaking on the fentanyl issue, which is a political vulnerability for Biden, he said: “Mexico’s pledge is to continue to provide support so that we do not allow the introduction of chemical components and chemical precursors for fentanyl, because we are fully aware of the damage it entails. to America’s youth. This is a matter of humanism. It is an act of solidarity. “We are sincerely committed to continuing to help with our policy capacity to prevent drug trafficking,” he said.
He spoke of 40 million Mexicans living in the US, and welcomed new policies that allow Central Americans to apply for entry into the US from their home countries as an alternative to illegal crossings through Mexico, with “all the suffering and risks that such an undertaking entails.’ “It is a humane way to tackle the migration phenomenon,” he said.
“He is the first president in recent times to open legal routes for migration,” Lopez Obrador said of Biden. He concluded his remarks by praising Biden, who even while in California faced even more troubling poll numbers as he faces re-election next year.
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