Relations between US President Biden and the President of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), are currently in a delicate and precarious balance. Despite President Biden’s attempts to form a more cooperative relationship with Mexico through immigration policy, the tension between the two countries has been steadily rising due to disagreements on the Biden Administration’s agenda on energy sources.
Immigration is the foremost issue in the public’s mind when discussing US-Mexico relations, and it has fittingly been one of the flagship issues addressed by the Biden administration. In the 11 days since President Biden took office, he has signed an unprecedented number of directives to expand on left-wing immigration policies and reverse many Trump-era immigration policies. These directives include plans to preserve and fortify DACA, pausing deportations for a 100-day period and stopping new enrollments in the Migrant Protection Protocols Policy, revoking Trump’s executive order excluding illegal aliens from the decennial census, and even stopping construction on the southern border wall with plans to redirect the funding and repurposing or canceling the contracts with any private contractors used in the wall’s construction.
Many of these policies could benefit Mexico in the future. However, some political experts from Mexico are wary of the future of US-Mexican relations and believe that their relationship will be that of neighboring countries only- not of tactical allies. This skepticism is not only reserved for political experts either. A poll made by El Financiero, a popular news source from Mexico, asking Mexican citizens what they think the relationship between President Biden and AMLO will be showed that only 36% of citizens believe the relationship will be a good one.
Part of this cynicism stems from issues regarding some of the Biden Administration and the Mexican government’s disagreement on energy sources. While President Biden’s immigration policy stands to help Mexico in the future, his energy policy does not. President Biden’s emphasis on finding renewable sources of energy and doing away with fossil fuels has the Mexican government nervous about the possible effects it might have on its economy. (Mexico is the 3rd largest exporter of crude oil in America. In 2019 Mexico exported almost 1.3 million per day, half of which was exported to the US.) The Biden Administration is unlikely to back down from its plan to reduce fossil fuel usage. Their sudden cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline permit all but confirms this. As President Biden moves forward with this agenda, he will undoubtedly face many challenges in easing tensions with the US’s southern neighbor. Whether or not President Biden can achieve the same level of cooperation his predecessor, President Trump, had with AMLO remains to be seen.