Joe Biden

FACT SHEET: Key Deliverables for the 2023 North American Leaders' Summit

January 10, 2023

North American cooperation makes our countries safer, our economies more competitive, and our supply chains more resilient. By working together, the countries of North America are better able to address shared challenges, like climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and transnational criminal organizations trafficking and smuggling people and illicit drugs like fentanyl. The North American Leaders' Summit (NALS) strengthens our partnerships and advances our shared priorities. Today, President Biden is joining President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada to promote a common vision for North America. This year, the leaders will build on last year's accomplishments with new initiatives and announcements.

President Biden has used NALS to drive North America's economic competitiveness and promote inclusive growth and prosperity. The three countries will deepen our economic cooperation, promote investment, and reinforce competitiveness, innovation, and resilience by:

  • Organizing the first-ever trilateral semiconductor forum with industry to adapt government policies and increase investment in semiconductor supply chains across North America. Participation will include senior industry representatives and cabinet level participation from the United States, Mexico, and Canada in early 2023.
  • Coordinating semiconductor supply chain mapping efforts to develop a collective understanding of unmet needs. This mapping with all the three countries will identify complementary investment opportunities.
  • Expanding North American critical minerals resource mapping to collect details on resources and reserves. The Geological Surveys of each country will organize a trilateral workshop to share data and facilitate cooperation.
  • Partnering with the region's private sector to increase student development and mobility under a new North America Student Mobility Project in coordination with Canada and Mexico, an expansion of the successful public-private partnership model of the 100,000 (100K) Strong in the Americas Innovation Fund. This is the first time Canada and Mexico will be added as co-government partners in the decade-old 100K Strong initiative.
  • Convening industry and academia experts in semiconductors, ICT, biomanufacturing, and other key advanced manufacturing and logistics industries for design sessions on the skills needed to develop the workforce North America over the next five years.

The United States, Mexico, and Canada recognize the urgency for rapid, coordinated and ambitious measures to build clean energy economies and respond to the climate crisis. At the NALS, the three leaders committed to combatting the climate crisis by:

  • Committing to reduce methane emissions from the solid waste and wastewater sector by at least 15% by 2030 from 2020 levels and deepen collaboration on waste and agriculture methane measurement and mitigation, including achieving the Global Methane Pledge through trilateral cooperation on methane and black carbon emissions.
  • Developing a Food Loss and Waste Reduction Action Plan by the end of 2025 outlining efforts to cut food loss and waste in half by 2030.
  • Sharing information between our countries on best practices to electrify and decarbonize public buses through the cooperative development of a Joint Transit Decarbonization Toolkit.
  • Developing a plan for operating standards and the installation of EV chargers along international borders to ensure a seamless EV charging transition from country to country.
  • Committing to trilateral cooperation to meet a joint commitment to conserve 30 percent of the world's land and ocean area by 2030 and to advance Indigenous-led conservation.
  • Developing a North American clean hydrogen market, including potential cooperation on research and development, safety codes and standards, cross-border hydrogen clusters, green freight corridors, and integrated maritime operations.

On the occasion of the six-month anniversary of the adoption of the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection, the leaders of North America reaffirmed their commitment to work together to achieve safe, orderly, and humane migration in the region. In particular, the United States, Mexico, and Canada will continue to champion expansion of legal pathways and other humane measures to address irregular migration in the region, including:

  • Finalizing and implementing the trilateral Extending Development Partnerships Action Plan with practical steps to improve coordination and address the root causes of irregular migration.
  • Announcing a virtual platform through the Los Angeles Declaration website to give migrants streamlined access to legal pathways. This will give potential migrants the information they need to come to Mexico, the United States, and Canada lawfully – making them less likely to rely on smugglers who lie about border restrictions in place and put their lives at risk.
  • Building on an initiative under the last NALS to further help migrants access legal pathways in-person, and announcing a partnership on a new center in southern Mexico with strong private sector support.
  • Increasing information sharing and best practices on the binational Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program in order to enhance labor rights.
  • Sharing best practices to increase promptness, efficiency, and fairness for the asylum processing systems to ensure that eligible individuals are promptly granted relief or protection and migrants with unmeritorious protection claims are quickly removed.
  • Countering xenophobia and discrimination against migrants and refugees by promoting balanced public narratives on migrants and refugees to support their meaningful inclusion in the region.

The United States, Canada, and Mexico committed to coordinate actions and strategies to combat arms and drug trafficking, as well as trafficking in persons, that represent a shared threat to the three countries. These include:

  • Resuming the North American Strategy to Combat Trafficking in Persons dialogue to improve cooperation against labor and sexual trafficking in the region.
  • Continuing collaboration within the North American Drug Dialogue (NADD) under an updated strategic framework to address illegal drug threats and strengthen public health approaches to substance use. This includes increased information sharing on chemicals used in the illicit manufacture of fentanyl and other synthetic drugs, meetings of NADD principals, and a trilateral Public Health Summit.
  • Developing a unified North American position to the collection, storage, use, sharing and retention of Passenger Name Records (PNR).
  • Increasing trilateral collaboration to advance nuclear security and safety in North America.
  • Increasing trilateral engagement to share information on cyber security best practices, including trainings for public servants on best practices.

Drawing from the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, the leaders committed to share information and develop public policies to protect our countries against current and future health crises. These include:

  • Revising the North American Plan for Animal and Pandemic Influenza (NAPAPI) to strengthen North America's ability to respond to health security threats, including influenza and beyond.

The three leaders committed to promote diverse, inclusive, equitable, and democratic societies that combat racism by:

  • Establishing a trilateral expert exchange of information to share best practices and strategies to advance equity and racial justice in our public policies.
  • Collaborating through regional and multilateral organizations to advance equity and justice.
  • Combatting violence against Indigenous women and girls, including by convening indigenous women leaders from all three countries to discuss their priorities and develop recommendations for the three governments.
  • Combatting violence against LGBTQI+ individuals, including by expanding membership within the Americas to the Equal Rights Coalition and the UN LGBTQI+ Core Group.
  • Adding Mexico to the Global Partnership for Action on Gender-Based Online Harassment and Abuse, a commitment from the first Summit for Democracy to bring together countries, international organizations, civil society, and the private sector to address technology-facilitated gender-based violence.

Joseph R. Biden, Jr., FACT SHEET: Key Deliverables for the 2023 North American Leaders' Summit Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/359334

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