Mexico’s President Obrador blasts US aid for Ukraine

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Friday blasted the US for providing so much aid to Ukraine — rather than sending more money to Latin American countries to help boost economic development.

“[The US] don’t do anything,” Obrador said at a high-level US-Mexico meeting in Washington.

“It’s more, a lot more, what they authorize for the war in Ukraine than what they give to help with poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean.”

The Mexican ruler, 69, is calling for some of the money allocated to Ukraine be used to help Latin America and the Caribbean and for a US program to “remove blockades and stop harassing independent and free countries.”

He said the sanctions are forcing Venezuelans, Cubans, Nicaraguans and Ecuadorans, Guatemalans and Hondurans to “emigrate.”

There has been a surge in Venezuelan migrants moving through Mexico in recent weeks in a bid to reach the US border. Many of the migrants say deteriorating economic and political conditions in their home country led them to make the journey.

Experts have said economic mismanagement and political recession are to blame for the influx in migrants leaving Venezuela and Cuba.

The harsh comments come after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, and Trade Representative Katherine Tai met their Mexican counterparts at the State Department. 

At the meeting, they focused on trade and economic ties, as well as the fentanyl crisis that is plaguing the US and Mexico, rather than the poverty issue.

“By creating the right incentives and business environments and harnessing our two nations’ respective strengths, we have a tremendous opportunity to make North America the most competitive, the most productive, the most dynamic region in the world,” Blinken said.

“We’re continuing to strengthen, to expand, and diversify supply chains in emerging industries like electric vehicles and semiconductors,” he said, noting that the U.S. and Mexico are launching a new initiative to produce semiconductors.

Blinken will also lead a US delegation to Mexico next week with Attorney General Merrick Garland and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Blinken is expected to meet with the Mexican president and the trip will focus on border security and migration.

With Post wires