Trudeau To Attend White House Summit, But AMLO A No-Show: BBG

Bloomberg's Eric Martin reporting that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will travel to the White House for only the second time during President Joe Biden's tenure on Friday 3 November for the inaugural Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity Leaders' Summit. Trudeau is set to join 10 other national leaders, although conspicuous by his absence will be Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO).

• While AMLO's foreign visits are rare in the extreme, visits to the White House are usually the exception to the rule. Given that one of the focuses of the summit is to assist LatAm nations struggling with poverty and huge migrant flows in order to relieve the pressure on the US' southern border, not having the Mexican president in attendance is something of a blow.
• The summit is the largest gathering of leaders from the Americas since the June 2022 Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, CA. The lack of US diplomatic and economic attention paid to Latin America over recent presidencies both Republican and Democratic has seen China become an increasingly important trade and investment partner for many countries in the region.
• The APEP Summit is seen as a late, but nonetheless important, effort by Washington, D.C., to begin to address regional issues and regain some diplomatic ground with many nations that have moved electorally leftwards and in a more anti-US direction in recent years.