President Joe Biden will meet with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in San Francisco, California, on Friday to round out his whirlwind week at the 2023 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
U.S. and Mexican officials have stated that discussing future cooperation on the fentanyl crisis would be a top priority for the leaders, and the meeting comes after Chinese President Xi Jinping met separately with Biden and Lopez Obrador.
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Fentanyl overdose deaths have more than tripled in the United States since 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of the 107,081 drug overdose deaths that occurred in the U.S. in 2022, the CDC attributed more than two-thirds of them to fentanyl and other manufactured opioids.
The Biden administration has taken steps to address the opioid epidemic, but those actions have largely focused on seizing the illicit drug at the southern border. The recent supplemental funding request Biden sent to Congress included $1.2 billion to expand “nonintrusive inspection” systems and hire additional Customs and Border Protection agents to search for fentanyl specifically, both at illegal border crossings and legal ports of entry.
However, Lopez Obrador has taken what drug experts call a “regressive” approach to addressing the fentanyl crisis. The Mexican leader refers to drug use as a “moral failing” and shut down a factory that manufactured a separate drug to help wean opioid addicts off their addictions earlier this year.
Biden and Xi agreed to tackle Chinese companies illegally shipping fentanyl precursors, chemical components critical to the production of the opioid, to Mexico. While U.S. officials have not confirmed what the U.S. gave up to secure such an agreement from Xi, reports indicate that Biden is open to dropping restrictions on the Institute of Forensic Science, a Chinese police organization responsible for the persecution of Uyghur Muslims.
China and Mexico have steadily worked to expand their trade relationship, and both the Chinese and Mexican readouts of the Xi-AMLO meeting showed the countries committing to cooperating on fentanyl trafficking.
Still, like his relationship with Xi, Biden’s relationship with the Mexican leader has gradually soured since 2021, at least in public.
The two leaders have frequently sparred in the media regarding operations at the U.S. southern border, and Biden has repeatedly criticized Lopez Obrador for his handling of the fentanyl crisis, the murder of journalists in his country, and other impacts of Mexico’s powerful drug cartels.
Lopez Obrador snubbed Biden’s invitation to attend the ninth Summit of the Americas in 2022 after the U.S. kept Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela off the invite list over human rights concerns.
U.S. officials say they expect Biden and Lopez Obrador to discuss combating fentanyl in conjunction with human smuggling, as both relate to cartel operations.
The meeting comes as the Biden administration struggles to address illegal immigration through the southern border. Biden has asked Congress to pass a supplemental funding request to allow for the hiring of additional immigration judges and CBP agents, yet Republicans have resisted the request without accompanying changes to border policy.
The White House, in turn, has referred to the immigration proposals put forth by “extreme MAGA” Republicans as unserious and out of touch.
Several of Biden’s domestic political opponents, including former President Donald Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), and Vivek Ramaswamy, have all advocated taking direct military action against cartels and securing the border forcibly.
San Francisco will offer a stark reminder of the escalating fentanyl crisis in the U.S. Addiction has been a driver of rising crime and homelessness in the city. San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins has made prosecuting drug dealers a core pillar of her agenda, an extreme reversal from the positions of recent prosecutors. Meanwhile, Mayor London Breed has sought to prioritize mental health-focused solutions to the drug epidemic while simultaneously requesting aid from the federal government to assist local law enforcement.
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Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), a top Biden ally and possible future presidential candidate himself, drew fire in recent days for cleaning out the city’s homeless camps ahead of the arrival of Lopez Obrador, Xi, and other Asian leaders.
“I know folks are saying, ‘Oh, they’re just cleaning up this place because all those fancy leaders are coming to town,'” Newsom said at a press conference. “That’s true, because it’s true — but it’s also true for months and months and months before APEC, we’ve been having conversations.”
