Biden Hosts AMLO in Crunch Week for U.S. Diplomacy

Welcome to today’s Morning Brief, looking at Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s White House visit, the Pacific Islands Forum, humanitarian aid to Syria, and more news worth following from around the world.

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López Obrador, commonly known as AMLO, arrives in Washington having snubbed Biden as the host of the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles in June. AMLO blamed the exclusion of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela for his boycott—but had already received his White House invitation by then.

Migration is expected to top the day’s agenda, as it has for the pair’s last few meetings, and recent events have further sharpened that focus. In Texas in late June, 53 migrants died while sealed inside a truck that was smuggling them into the United States.

On a wider scale, arrests at the U.S.-Mexico border are continuing to increase and reached record highs in May, when U.S. Border Patrol reported 220,000 apprehensions. That figure included 77,000 Mexicans  and was driven upward by a high number of repeat attempts (nearly 25 percent of the total), making it the highest monthly total since March 2000.

As Jared Olson reported in Foreign Policy in June, AMLO’s policies have not helped tamp down the uptick in those fleeing violence. AMLO said he would continue to push Biden to expand U.S. visa access to Mexicans as a way to address the surge in numbers. Last month, Mexican Interior Secretary Adán Augusto López said 300,000 new temporary work visas would be announced at today’s summit, although the U.S. side has made no mention of it.

If anything, the White House seems cautious about making any moves that could be seen as encouraging migration at the southern border. On Tuesday, the Biden administration went against the urging of senior Democrats and extended Temporary Protected Status to Venezuelans who had arrived in the United States before March 8, 2021, but did not expand protections to those who had arrived after that date.

In a press conference on Monday, AMLO made the case for expanding legal immigration to address U.S. worker shortages and to counter economic headwinds facing both countries.

“The workforce is just as important for a business as capital or activity, so if we want to tackle the economic crisis, we have to produce,” he said. “Inflation may have started circumstantially due to the pandemic and the war, but structurally it has to do with a lack of production.”

Like the United States, Mexico is experiencing a spike in inflation of around 8 percent, but unlike the U.S. Federal Reserve, Mexico’s central bank has been hiking interest rates for more than a year. The steady increases have helped blunt the effect that the Fed’s interventions have had on other emerging market currencies and contributed to a “super peso” effect despite a weak economy.

The Pacific Islands Forum. Leaders from the Pacific Islands Forum member states gather today in Fiji, with attempts to project a sense of unity already damaged by the surprise exit of Kiribati from the group. Kiribati President Taneti Maamau announced his country’s departure on Sunday, saying the forum had failed to address the concerns of Micronesian nations. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern are in attendance, as Western nations continue a charm offensive in the face of China’s advances in the region.

Yellen in Japan. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen met with her Japanese counterpart, Shunichi Suzuki, in Tokyo today as the U.S. official makes her case for creating a price cap on Russian oil exports. Yellen earlier canceled a public visit to the Port of Yokohama in deference to those mourning former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose funeral was held today.

“It’s unclear whether Iran has delivered any of these UAVs to Russia already,” Sullivan said, using the acronym for unmanned aerial vehicles, “but this is just one example of how Russia is looking to countries like Iran for capabilities.”

Syria’s aid extension. The U.N. Security Council is set to vote today on a draft resolution extending a mandate to deliver external humanitarian aid to northern Syria by six months after a deadline expired on Sunday. Western nations had originally pushed for a yearlong extension but were thwarted by a Russian veto.

8 billion and counting. The world’s population is set to break the 8 billion mark later this year, the United Nations announced on Monday as part of its latest projections. Global population levels are set to increase to 9.7 billion in 2050 and peak at 10.4 billion in the 2080s, according to the new figures. The projections also estimated that India would leapfrog China to become the world’s most populous nation in 2023.