Joint Press Availability With Mexican Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland

MODERATOR: (In progress) (Via interpreter) everybody and welcome to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We thank you for being here for the meeting of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of North America: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Canada, Chrystia Freeland, the Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and the Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Mexico Luis Videgaray Caso.

We would like to ask the ministers to get to the podium.

Now we are going to listen to Mr. Chancellor Luis Videgaray Caso.

FOREIGN SECRETARY VIDEGARAY: (Via interpreter) Thank you very much. Good afternoon. I’m going to speak in Spanish, so I’m going to wait for you to have the correct translation. Good afternoon for all the media. I am very glad to give – and welcome the Secretary of the United States Mr. Rex Tillerson and the Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland from Canada. It’s not the first time they are here in Mexico. We are very glad to welcome them again.

And we are happy to have the opportunity to work in different topics that are important for our North American region. North America – we are convinced that it can be the most competitive region of the world in the next decades, and that’s why we are working. We are working in a framework not only of neighborhood, but of friendship, of collaboration, and the sovereignty of the countries, knowing that together we can do more.

In the conversations that we’ve had today, of course, competitiveness is the core topic. How are we going to work together to generate more economic activities, more jobs for the inhabitants of this region? One of the topics of competitiveness where we can have an opportunity, an important opportunity, is the topic of energy.

The North American region has the capabilities in human and the natural resources to be a very clean energy and cheap energy to be able to transform our societies and our economies. We have agreed to keep on working with the works of our secretaries, and we are also having the objective of getting to the regulations to generate the – and create the synergies where we can have a mutual construction of infrastructure, and of course, to enable the private sector, which is going to be able to create projects not only from hydrocarbons but also from the energy sector in clean energies.

In the commercial area, we see an important opportunity in the modernization of the Free Trade Agreement of North America, which is NAFTA. And this is going to be led by the corresponding areas of the government. We are making progress in a professional way, and from the Mexican Government we see a great opportunity to have a win-win-win situation – where Mexico wins, when Canada wins, and where the United States wins. We don’t see it as a game where someone loses and someone wins. We want a modern agreement to be up to the situation of the 21st century. The North American Free Trade Agreement was agreed 25 years ago; it was a different world then. And now we have the opportunity to adapt it to the new reality, to have an agreement that is fair and that is reciprocal, to have trade based on rules, these rules that are going to allow this region to be – prosper and to keep generating jobs and welfare for the three parts.

For full news visit: https://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2018/02/277876.htm