Obama Heads to Mexico Meeting With Amigos Strained by Keystone

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-18/obama-heads-to-mexico-meeting-with-amigos-strained-by-keystone.html

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s frustration with U.S. President Barack Obama’s failure to approve the Keystone XL pipeline may make this installment of the North America summit, known as the “Three Amigos,” the frostiest since the annual meetings began almost a decade ago.

At the one-day meeting tomorrow in Toluca, Mexico, with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Harper, Obama is bringing an agenda focused on trade, education, border security and stopping drug trafficking. Yet 20 years after the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect, the U.S. and Canada are at loggerheads over a $5.4 billion collaboration that would carry oil south from the thick sands of Alberta to American refineries along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana.

“People always call these things the ‘Three Amigos,’ but I would say at this point in time it’s difficult to use that term,” said Duncan Wood, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. “From the Canadian point of view, Keystone is an extremely big issue, and they’ve staked a lot of the relationship with the United States on it. From the U.S. side, you have complex internal politics that need to be resolved.”

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