Nancy Cook and Jordan Fabian, Bloomberg News

WASHINGTON
EnergiesNet.com 07 13 2022

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador boasted to US President Joe Biden that gasoline prices are cheaper in his country during a White House meeting Tuesday aimed at shoring up ties between the countries after a series of disagreements.

Lopez Obrador, known as AMLO, said his government was making it easier for Americans who live close to the southern border to purchase gasoline less expensively in Mexico — and that lots of Americans were taking advantage of the proximity.

US gasoline prices currently average $4.66 per gallon, according to AAA, down from a high of more than $5 a gallon last month. AMLO said gasoline costs about $3.12 a gallon in Mexico, by comparison — though fuel is more heavily subsidized by the government in his country.

Mexico is also supplying fuel to California, Arizona, and other border states, he said. He added that Mexico is planning to build natural gas liquefaction plants and fertilizer factories with US investment.

Soaring prices at the pump are a primary driver of red-hot inflation that’s dragging on Biden politically and endangering his party’s chances of maintaining control of Congress in the November midterm elections. 

Biden responded to AMLO with a little boasting of his own, saying that the US is the fastest-growing major economy in the world and that since he took office, the country’s created 8.5 million jobs and wages have increased. 

AMLO, as the Mexican president is known, visited Washington after declining Biden’s invitation to the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles last month. The Mexican leader and others in Latin America objected to the US exclusion of the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua over democracy and human-rights concerns. 

The Mexican president has also accused the US of prioritizing aid for Ukraine over assistance to Central America. 

Before AMLO delivered extended remarks on Mexico’s relationship with the US and needled Biden over gasoline prices, the US president said that reports of a rift between them were “over-hyped.”

“We have a strong and productive relationship,” Biden said.

bloomberg.com 07 12 2022