Mexico President Enrique Pena Nieto welcomes Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and U.S. President Barack Obama for the latest Three Amigos summit in Toluca, Mexico.
Technically, the name is the North American Leaders Summit but the Three Amigos nickname has stuck for this event.
The frustration of these summits is that they're too short and infrequent. This meeting is the first for Pena Nieto; the countries met in April 2 years ago and before that, the leaders had not met since 2009.
And they won't meet for long; we don't know if Obama will spend Wednesday night in Mexico.
Despite what you might think based on the U.S. media, agenda items other than the Keystone XL pipeline will come up in the discussions. We've broken them down by country.
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Canada wants a decision, a positive decision, on the Keystone XL pipeline. Harper said he will bring up the matter privately with Obama.
Yes, the southern half of the Keystone XL pipeline is being built, but Obama's delay reminds us of the days before the shot clock was introduced when weaker college basketball teams would use the four corners offense to wait out the clock.
Harper said in January that he would wait out Obama's term in 2017 to get the Keystone XL pipeline built. Harper is assuming he'll be around then; the next Canadian election is in 2015.
Canada and Mexico did come to an agreement before the summit on expanding air travel and a "joint action plan" on economic growth and trade.
According to numbers from the Prime Minister's Office, Canada imported $25.5 billion from Mexico and exported about $5.4 billion to Mexico in 2012. That's a good sized trade deficit.
Mexico desperately wants Canada to lift the visa requirements in place since 2009. The Harper Government has insisted the visa requirements are needed to curb bogus asylum claims.
A new report from the Canadian Council for Chief Executives released this week determined that spending by Mexican tourists in Canada went from $365 million in 2008 to $200 million in 2012.
Harper keeps hinting that the visas might be lifted at some point. Until that happens, it's just talk. The randomness of the hints can lead one to wonder if they were needed in the first place.
The country also wants outside investment in its oil industry. In December, Mexico passed a constitutional amendment to end state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos' oil monopoly, in place since 1938.
United States wants, well, this is the problem with the Three Amigos concept. Canada and Mexico usually want something from the country in the middle, and they want the United States to help them.
President Barack Obama would like to emphasize the benefits of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership. Canada wants to trade more with Asia with its own negotiations, and proposed pipeline through British Columbia to make get oil to Asia.
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