President Biden to Host North American Leaders’ Summit
US President Joe Biden will host a North American Leaders’ summit with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador today.
The summit will cover issues such as climate change, immigration and COVID-19. The meeting used to be a regularly held event, until former President Donald Trump ended the tradition following the 2016 summit.
In addition to canceling the summit, Trump also greatly damaged relations with Canada and Mexico by insisting on aggressively renegotiating trade agreements with both nations, making disparaging remarks about Mexicans, building a wall on the Mexican border and accusing Canada of cheating the US in trade. As such, today’s summit will also serve as a new beginning for North American relations and a key milestone of President Biden’s broader reset of US foreign policy.
While Biden has faced challenges with resetting relations with Russia, Saudi Arabia and even European allies like France, this summit should go smoothly and give Biden a small foreign policy win. The leaders will likely agree on a path forward on easing Covid-19 travel restrictions between nations, new methods to further bolster trade and additional plans to fight climate change.
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