The Government of the United States accepted that Mexico can send at least 20 agents to supervise the control of arms trafficking and establish reciprocity in matters of binational security, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard reported this Saturday.
“The Foreign Ministry is already working on it, in combination with the Security Cabinet, and we will be informing you of the steps we are going to take in this regard,” Ebrard said.
The foreign minister participated in the plenary meeting of the deputies of the ruling National Regeneration Movement (Morena), where he reiterated that Mexico can win the unprecedented lawsuit filed against 11 companies that manufacture weapons in the United States before a court in Boston, Massachusetts.
“Why are we doing this (the lawsuit)? Because we think we can win their case and have an impact on reducing (arms) trafficking to Mexico,” he explained.
The official emphasized that one of the country’s priorities is to reduce violence, but to do so, arms trafficking must be combated.
That is why the Mexican government decided to file this legal remedy against one of the most powerful industries in the United States.
Ebrard affirmed that the United States “is assuming that this Mexican priority has the same rank as the priorities that they have, regarding fentanyl, which also worries us a lot, of course. And so the understanding is starting to work,” he said.
The Government attributes a large part of the violence in Mexico to weapons, which registered 33,308 homicides in 2021 after the two most violent years in its history, under the mandate of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, with 34,690 murder victims in 2019 and 34,554 in 2020.
Ebrard also acknowledged that there are differences in the bilateral relationship on issues such as the rules of origin in the automotive industry, “because we don’t have the same interests.”
However, he reported that a panel will be held that the Ministry of Economy has already requested.
“Can there be differences in other things? Well, yes. If a subsidy is going to be given to those who acquire electric vehicles, which are manufactured mainly in the United States.”
In this sense, he said that there may be different approaches on various issues, but there is an architecture that allows them to be resolved.
The foreign minister assured that both Mexico and the United States are “on the path of mutual respect” on several fronts.
“Our country is participating in a high-level economic dialogue, where we have the plan to accelerate investments between Mexico and the United States and Canada, with the purpose of protecting supply and production lines, for which we have just lived with the pandemic.”
And he stressed that the Mexican president has shown that it is possible to have “a close relationship” with the United States and Canada, “but at the same time activism and a very relevant role with Latin America and the Caribbean,” he specified.