DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS — When President Joe Biden speaks to his Mexican counterpart Andrés Manuel López Obrador Tuesday, just days before the Title 42 border restrictions lift, the two North American leaders will talk about migration, fentanyl trafficking and economic cooperation. But López Obrador might also bring up a subject that hasn’t received as much attention as the others. Last week, he sent a letter to Biden asking him to stop the U.S. Agency for International Development from financing civil society groups that the Mexican president says are hostile to his government. López Obrador also complained about it to Biden’s Homeland Security Advisor Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, whom he met in Mexico City on May 2. He sees the financing as a proof of interventionism in Mexican affairs, an “arrogant and offensive move,” he told reporters last Wednesday. The USAID complaint is part of a long line of complaints from Mexico’s firebrand president against U.S. interventionism. He has often targeted the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. State Department or Republican lawmakers who have introduced legislation threatening to bomb Mexican drug cartels. With Mexico’s cooperation crucial to Biden’s agenda to stem the flow of migrants and the deadly synthetic drug fentanyl across the southern border, the White House cannot afford to shrug off the Mexican president’s complaints. “If the U.S. dismissed him wholeheartedly, it’s going to make these conversations — and again some of these are happening behind closed doors — a hell of a lot more difficult to be had,” said Gladys McCormick, the Jay and Debe Moskowitz Endowed Chair on Mexico-U.S. Relations at Syracuse University in New York, referring to immigration talks between the two nations as Title 42 lifts this week. For now, López Obrador has committed to continue accepting back migrants from the U.S. on humanitarian grounds. And while denying that fentanyl is produced in his country, he sent some of his top officials to the White House last month to discuss how to work together to disrupt the supply chain of the synthetic opioid which has become the top killer of young adults in the United States. But he made it clear in a press conference last month that cooperation with the U.S. will be on his terms — and he will not accept being dictated what to do. And his disparaging of U.S. institutions, while mostly for domestic consumption, does end up affecting the operations of those organizations in Mexico, which is another reason why the Biden administration shouldn’t ignore it, McCormick said. López Obrador still has high approval ratings — around 60 percent in March — and his supporters accept the validity of his attacks, McCormick said. “He has really diminished the capacity of the DEA in Mexico, in dramatic ways,” she said. USAID’s people on the ground could face backlash and lose collaborators in Mexico, McCormick said. An USAID spokesperson highlighted the “deep partnership” between the U.S. and Mexico in a comment to POLITICO, without saying if López Obrador’s complaint will have any impact on its funding decisions. But ultimately, the White House will have to give some concessions to the Mexican president. “Some of those conversations have to be had in terms of sort of suggesting to him and his representatives that they are in fact taking it seriously because you don’t want to make [López Obrador] look bad,” McCormick said. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at cpaun@politico.com or on Twitter at @carmenpaun.
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