Mexico president heads to Washington for meeting with Trump

MEXICO CITY (AP) — For his first foreign trip as president, Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador travels to Washington Tuesday to meet with President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly taken shots at Mexico and Mexican migrants to rally his base.

The visit, coming just four months before U.S. elections, has many Mexicans cringing. Trump has insulted them, threatened crippling tariffs to strongarm Mexico into playing an uncomfortable role in U.S. immigration policy and insisted they will pay for a border wall meant to keep migrants out of the U.S.

But López Obrador has had a surprisingly warm relationship with Trump. He likes to point out that more recently Trump helped Mexico reach a deal with other oil-producing nations to cut production and aided Mexico in obtaining more ventilators to face the coronavirus pandemic. Both presidents talk about a blossoming friendship that seems to stem from their pursuit of unapologetically nationalist agendas.