Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here| Email Eli | Email Lauren President JOE BIDEN is set to fly out Sunday for his first trip to Latin America since taking office. He’s heading to Mexico City for the “Three Amigos” Summit with Mexican President ANDRÉS MANUEL LÓPEZ OBRADOR and Canadian Prime Minister JUSTIN TRUDEAU. On the way, he’ll make his first stop as president at the U.S. southern border in El Paso, Texas. No doubt both trips will provide plenty of photo ops. But there also will be a full agenda on tap ranging from the border crisis, to trade and economic issues and climate and energy. To help break it down, West Wing Playbook caught up with ROBERTA JACOBSON, Biden’s former border czar and the ambassador to Mexico under President BARACK OBAMA. This conversation has been edited for space. Do you expect this trip to move the ball at all, or is it mainly symbolic? We have to acknowledge that it’s symbolic. But symbolism, to me, when done right leads to substance. Biden is a president who believes deeply, and I’d say correctly, in the importance of personal diplomacy. In many significant ways, he and Trudeau are very much on the same page whether it’s on Russia-Ukraine or climate change or other things, but there are some tensions in the relationship with Mexico, even if they’re just on the rhetorical level at times. There’s certainly tensions in terms of trade disputes and the USMCA. And that’s where presidential conversations in person, and not on Zoom, not by your Cabinet secretaries, can really move the ball. How would you describe the Biden-Obrador relationship? President Biden understands really well that this important relationship is critical to the United States economically and in security terms. But there is always noise in this relationship. Noise because López Obrador might say something that is offensive to the United States, whether it’s about [Wikileaks founder] JULIAN ASSANGE or others. But Biden is very good — not always ignoring that noise because some of it can be important — but rising above it. So I think their relationship is actually better than it sometimes looks in AMLO’s press conferences. What will you be watching for during the summit? To me, this is by far the most consequential “Three Amigos” summit because of what’s going on in the world. I expect and hope that there’s going to be a focus on the competitiveness of North America. I think especially having passed the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act in the U.S., working to take advantage of this potential for companies and investment to look toward North America is a very big opportunity. Obviously, there will be discussion of migration issues, certainly among the U.S. and Mexico. And it will be also interesting to look at how they talk about as a whole, climate change and to a much lesser degree, energy. There’s a huge priority on climate change for both sides. Mexico has been lagging on this issue in some respects, but made very important commitments through COP 27. So trade might be the biggest issue on the table? Things like migration and the action that the Mexicans took against [fentanyl trafficker] OVIDIO GUZMÁN in the last few days will be sexy and they’ll be top of mind for many of the media. But to me, not even long term, but really short term as well, I’m looking at the competitiveness and trade issue. That could be the most consequential thing they try to move ahead on. When it comes to the U.S.-Mexico relationship and migration policy, what is important for people to understand? One thing that is sometimes lost in the migration debate is that both the composition of undocumented migrants, and the role of Mexico, has changed over recent months and years. The composition began in the Biden administration with the overwhelming number of migrants being from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, and that’s where the administration’s attention was focused in terms of response. Now there are many more migrants, as a percentage of the whole, from Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela. It has demanded a bit of a shift. But the second thing is that over the last few years, Mexico has become not just a transit country, but a destination country for migrants. This has changed Mexico’s way of looking at migration … not only because of AMLO knowing they can’t necessarily always welcome everybody at infinitum, but public opinions have changed very dramatically in Mexico. MEA CULPA: In Thursday’s edition, we (ok, let’s be real, Sam introduced the error into the copy) mistakenly referred to the U.S. Virgin Islands as an international travel destination. We apologize for the error (it’s a domestic destination — no passport required — although returning U.S. travelers do have to clear customs!). Thanks to all of you who emailed us about this. MESSAGE US —Are you AMLO? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com.
| 
