Mexico won’t join BRICS, president says

Mexico City, Aug 8 (EFE).- President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Tuesday that Mexico will not seek to join BRICS, focusing instead on enhancing its economic relationship with the United States and other countries in the Americas.

“We are not going to participate in this bloc, in this association. Of course, we celebrate that other countries do. However, for reasons of proximity, geopolitics, we will continue strengthening the alliance with North America and the whole of the Americas,” he said during his daily morning news conference.

The president, known as AMLO, commented on media reports that Mexico was among 19 nations which applied to become part of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) ahead of the group’s upcoming summit in Cape Town.

AMLO said that his administration’s priority is building on the July 2020 US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the successor to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Nearly 85 percent of Mexican exports go to the US and Canada.

“Our program is to bolster the treaty with the United States and Canada, for us to consolidate as a region,” the Mexican president said, stressing the importance of shared investment, technology, and labor power among the three countries.

In May, he said, Mexico became the No.1 trading partner of the US.

He said that Foreign Secretary Alicia Barcena will discuss economic integration with US officials when she visits Washington this week, alongside other topics such as migration and drug trafficking.

AMLO, whose term ends in November 2024, said that he will use the rest of his time in office to advance the project of transforming the Americas into an economic and trade block that would be “the most important region in the world.”

“We are going to pursue the integration of the entire Americas in the medium- and long-term, but we will change old policies that have not worked and in addition, convince the political class, above all in the United States, of the importance of Latin America,” the Mexican president said. EFE ppc/dr