Welcome, We're here with Ken Salazar, who is the U S Ambassador to Mexico,
Ambassador Salazar, it's a pleasure speaking with you.
>> It's my honor to be with you and the young Turks.
>> I gotta say, I'm loving the hat, I'm loving the tie,
you look like you're here to party.
>> I'm here to celebrate with everybody in the city of the Angels.
All right, well let's talk a little bit about the summit.
Unfortunately, it began with a little bit of controversy after the president
of Mexico decided to boycott the summit as a result of the Biden administration
refusing to invite a few countries including Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
What are your thoughts on Biden's decision to avoid inviting those
specific countries?
>> Yeah, the president is correct, we do not invite dictators and
despots to come to a gathering of democracies.
Will be akin to us inviting Russia to come to a meeting that's
about the future of the Americas and democracy.
So the president's decision is correct, but
we are not to let this summit be taken away by the question of the invitations
because that's really not what the summit is about.
The summit really is about all the Americas and
we have a gathering of most of the countries that are here and
the alignment of the countries including Mexico is one that's very good.
Mexico is here, Mexico is being represented by the highest levels of
government and they're gonna participate in a way that's gonna be very constructive
to the results we'll get here at the summit.
So I feel good about where we are and we're gonna have a great summit and
continue to do the work US, Mexico.
>> It's interesting because the United States loves to mention,
dictatorial regimes and its unwillingness to work with such countries.
Or governments, but at the same time as the United States government
absolutely does business with dictatorial regimes.
Authoritarian governments like Saudi Arabia, for instance.
And in the case of Venezuela, I mean, just a month or so ago,
Biden reached out to Nicolas Maduro.
And asked for an increase in energy production in order to kind of mitigate
the damage that's being done as a result of Russia's invasion into Ukraine.
I'll ask you this, I feel that this summit is more about getting politicians and
governments together with business interests.
It's a little difficult to do that with a communist country like Cuba.
Do you think that that has more to do with the decision to avoid inviting Cuba and
Venezuela to such a summit?
>> No, I don't, I think where we are here is working on the economic and
democratic alignment in the Americas.
The last 10, 20 years, there are fewer democracies now than there were,
say 10 years ago in the world and
fewer democracies in the Western Hemisphere as well.
And so for the United States to take a principled position that we're
supporting democracies in the Western Hemisphere is a principal position.
The future of the Americas is based in my view on two fundamental propositions.
One is the economic integration where there is alignment between
President Lopez Obrador and
President Biden and what we have to do to near shore manufacturing from China.
And other places here to the Americas were integrated in so
many ways from auto manufacturing to lots of different things that we do together.
And secondly, the democracies, we need to help restored democracies that function
well, because when they don't function, when the governments don't function well.
And you see the huge dislocation displacement of millions of people in
Venezuela because the government has failed them.
So governments have to be held accountable to deliver for their people.
>> Some of that displacement is definitely shown in the current
caravan that's traveling through Mexico.
There are Venezuelans who are part of the more than 6000 people who have decided to
take part in that caravan.
And the United States has been very restrictive in regard to its immigration
policy, even under the Biden administration.
What are your thoughts on that?
>> We have an immigration system that is completely broken and it's been broken for
a very long time.
I was in the U S Senate working very hard with Senator John McCain and
Senator Ted Kennedy on immigration reform back in my time in the Senate.
And so this manifestation of a humanitarian crisis that we see on
migration across the Americas is because there has been a failure to
develop an immigration system that is human, legal that is good for
all of the different reasons that you have immigration.
We're a country of immigrants here and so
one of the outcomes that we hope for here is a change in how we see immigration
in the Americas where we see it as a responsibility of a region.
It's not just a United States issue, it's an issue that the United States Mexico and
the region.
And so I expect that one of the most important outcomes of this summit is going
to be a commitment by the countries of the Americas including Mexico.
They were gonna work on the migration issues together as a region.
I think that will be one of the historic things that will come out of this summit.
>> You previously mentioned how intertwined the United States and
Mexican economies are.
And you specifically mentioned the automobile manufacturing and
I couldn't help but think about NAFTA,
which was then later renegotiated under Trump and renamed.
What are your perceptions of the outcomes of NAFTA,
particularly the impact that NAFTA had on the agricultural industry in Mexico and
also the manufacturing industry here in the United States.
We lost manufacturing jobs to Mexico with business interests looking for
cheap labor.
And we also started exporting corn,
cheap corn to Mexico which devastated agricultural workers.
There have there been any efforts to mitigate that damage?
>> So the USMCA, TEMIC as we know it in Mexico is one of the most modern
trade agreements in the history of the world and
there you have protections for workers and workers rights.
You see that manifesting itself all over Mexico today.
You have protections for the environment that you didn't have before and you have
other kinds of assistance that will lift up in our view as it's being implemented.
And we're watching it very closely here in the United States that will basically
address some of the dislocations that happened under the trade agreements of
the past.
They were very hopeful that we're gonna see the kind of development through Mexico
but also the United States that supports the integration of the economies.
You think about clean energy for example where there is a great opportunity for
Mexico to become a clean energy powerhouse for the Americas.
It's required in part because we have now the automotive industry saying
that we are moving forward to 100% electoral mobility.
And so the commitments were working with the Americas but specifically with Mexico
here at the summit are gonna further that agenda, it's an economic integration.
I think how President Biden says it all the time is that we have to grow
our economy from the middle out but also from the bottom up and
when he says that he's worried about the lower middle class.
He's worried about the people who have been left behind by the economic policies
of the past, so that's a commitment that we're making here in Los Angeles.
>> You mentioned some of the worker protections,
can you be specific about that?
What worker protections have been implemented following NAFTA?
>> Probably the best thing to do as an example, you know?
So I went to the GM plant in Silao, where they have over 2000
workers at that GM plant and there they were negotiating for
the first time a new collective bargaining agreement for the workers.
And it had a lot of different features to it, but
they ended up agreeing on a new collective bargaining agreement that
significantly increased the wages of the workers.
Working at that plant that provided them benefits
that had been eluded from the prior arrangements that they had.
So the workers are happy and they're doing much better.
So yeah, there, all over the country,
those kinds of efforts are being implemented under USMCA.
>> And I wanna pivot to a completely different topic and
it will be the final topic we discussed.
And it has to do with increasing violence in the United States, but also that
violence which ends up being exported to Mexico and other Latin American countries.
Gun violence is a huge huge problem, the easy accessibility of
guns is a huge problem not just domestically in the US.
But in the form of these guns being smuggled across the border to
Mexico to some of these Latin American countries as well.
What would you like to see be done in Congress to kind of help stop
the flow of guns to Mexico and other Latin American countries?
>> So I echo what President Biden said today and
what he's been saying ever since he was in the US Senate,
we need to have better regulation on guns in this country.
The assault weapons that are out there killing young people as they so
heartbrokenly did in Uvalde, Texas or the shootings that we saw over the weekend.
The United States, to there leaders in the Senate have to wake up to this reality.
And there's conversations going on that hopefully will bring
about a breakthrough on a legal framework that has been paralyzed
in part because the powers that affect the US.
Senate, the political powers have basically had them come to paralysis and
my view that's wrong, the President's view is that's wrong.
And so hopefully we'll get some of our laws changed here on the US,
Mexico part of that, the about 70% of
the weapons that are killing people in Mexico come from the United States.
And so one of the changes that we've made because of
the bicentennial security framework that we have with Mexico
now is our working together on firearms trafficking.
So if we find and we are fighting them members of these transnational criminal
organizations that are involved in trafficking arms to Mexico, the cartels.
They're gonna do the time in prison, both here and in Mexico.
So those are the changes that we brought about just in the last several months in
Mexico, it's a high priority issue.
President Biden when he was in the White House spoke about Andres Lopez also
spoke about Roosevelt and Lopez Obrador has spoken about Roosevelt as well.
And one of the things that they focus on are the four freedoms of a democracy.
One of the old freedoms is the right of
citizens to be able to live free of fear right now.
That's not the case, whether it's a school in Uvalde, Texas or
whether it's stores in Boulder, Colorado or whether it's places in Mexico.
So we have a lot of work to do, that's a keystone for
us to be able to ensure that we're gonna have a democracy that sustains itself.
>> And final question for you and I really think that this goes to the heart
of everything we've talked about, it has an impact on everything.
We've talked about, thoughts on restricting the flow of corporate
money into the campaign coffers of our politicians.
>> Campaign finance reform needs to happen in this country,
there's when Senator McCain and Senator Feingold passed McCain Feingold,
that was a step in the absolute right direction.
The United States Supreme Court took it in a very bad direction.
Under citizens united I would hope that somehow there is the courage
to rein in what's happening now with the flow of money from not only corporations.
But from very wealthy people basically can buy elections that
are not to be a hallmark of democracy anywhere.
It ought not to be the hallmark of democracy here, you don't have to
be the hallmark of democracy in Mexico or anywhere else around the world.
People like to have a right to vote,
it ought to be respected and money should not buy elections anywhere.
>> Couldn't agree more with you on that one.
Thank you so much for being so generous with your time for speaking with me and
I hope that we get an opportunity to speak again.
>> Thank you Anna and my very best to you.