Mexico and France announce plan to boost economic and cultural ties after leaders meet

MEXICO CITY -- MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico and France announced plans Friday to boost their economical concern and taste practice arsenic Mexico seeks to fortify commercialized relationships with Europe portion inactive nether tariffs imposed by the Trump administration.

The announcement came aft Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum met with her French counterpart Emmanuel Macron astatine the National Palace successful the Mexican capital, which marked the European leader’s archetypal authoritative sojourn to Mexico.

It follows months of Mexico attempting to get person to the European Union successful the look of trade tensions with the United States, the main marketplace for its products.

Washington presently applies tariffs up to 50% connected Mexican products, including steel, copper and tomatoes, and others not covered by the escaped commercialized statement betwixt Mexico, the United States and Canada (the USMCA).

“Today we statesman a caller section successful our strategical alliance, 1 that demands — and that we privation to beryllium — adjacent much global,” Macron said astatine a property conference, announcing that some governments had committed to boosting economical cooperation. He affirmed that the 700 French companies operating successful the state would proceed investing and creating jobs, particularly successful the aerospace sector.

French companies presently make astir 150,000 nonstop jobs and 700,000 indirect jobs successful Mexico, according to Macron.

Mexico and France strengthened commercialized relations successful the past 2 decades aft the signing of the European Union-Mexico Free Trade Agreement, which went into effect successful 2000. France is the sixth largest European capitalist successful Mexico.

For her part, Sheinbaum said that adjacent year’s renewal of the commercialized statement with the European Union — which volition coincide with the bicentennial of diplomatic relations betwixt Mexico and France — volition supply galore opportunities for economical practice betwixt the 2 nations.

Sheinbaum besides highlighted the acceptance of the reciprocal impermanent treaties connected the accumulation of the pre-Hispanic handwritten manuscripts known arsenic codices: Azcatitlan, which France has and promises to bring to Mexico, and the Boturini codices that volition beryllium exhibited successful France.

“These codices are cardinal to the narration betwixt Europe and Mexico. They correspond Mexico’s surviving representation of our history,” she added.

In 2020, the authorities of then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-2024) made arrangements with the French authorities to petition the instrumentality of the Codex Bourbon and the Codex Azcatitlan.

For Mexico, the instrumentality of the Azcatitlan Codex is of large worth due to the fact that of the accusation it contains connected the improvement of Tenochtitlan, the superior of the Mexica empire, from its instauration to the 17th century, said José Alfonso Suárez del Real y Aguilera, governmental advisor to the General Coordination of Social Communication of the Presidency.

The Boturini Codex is simply a 16th-century manuscript that tells the communicative of the migration of the Mexica radical from their spot of root to the founding of Mexico-Tenochtitlan.