By AAMER MAD­HANI, ROB GILLIES, and MARIA VERZA, As­so­ci­at­ed Press

WASH­ING­TON (AP) — North Amer­i­ca’s lead­ers are re­viv­ing three-way sum­mit­ry af­ter a Trump-era break.  As Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau and Mex­i­can Pres­i­dent An­drés Manuel López Obrador re­sume the tra­di­tion of the North Amer­i­ca Lead­ers’ Sum­mit on Thurs­day, the three al­lies face deep dif­fer­ences on mi­gra­tion, cli­mate and trade.

There’s “not that much in com­mon be­tween them, at least in their vi­sion for what they want for their coun­tries,” said Ken­neth Frankel, pres­i­dent of the Cana­di­an Coun­cil for the Amer­i­c­as. “Not just what they want for their coun­tries, but what they can de­liv­er for their coun­tries.”

Thurs­day’s meet­ings at the White House will be the first tri­lat­er­al get-to­geth­er for North Amer­i­can lead­ers since a June 2016 gath­er­ing of Trudeau, Barack Oba­ma and En­rique Peña Ni­eto in Ot­tawa. The gath­er­ings took a hia­tus un­der Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, who feud­ed with Trudeau and Ni­eto dur­ing his tenure.

Biden has made some progress in re­pair­ing re­la­tions with U.S. neigh­bours af­ter the tur­bu­lent Trump years. But many sig­nif­i­cant strains re­main — and some new ones have emerged.

Trudeau ar­rived in Wash­ing­ton with con­cerns about buy-Amer­i­can pro­vi­sions in the pres­i­dent’s pro­posed $1.85 tril­lion so­cial ser­vices plan. Mex­i­co’s pri­or­i­ties head­ing in­to the sum­mit were to ob­tain con­crete ad­vances on im­mi­gra­tion and more eq­ui­table ac­cess to COVID-19 vac­cines.

The tra­di­tion of three-way meet­ings start­ed when George W. Bush played host to Mex­i­co’s Vi­cente Fox and Cana­da’s Paul Mar­tin in 2005 for talks at his ranch in Wa­co, Texas.

Biden has al­ready held sep­a­rate vir­tu­al meet­ings with Trudeau in Feb­ru­ary and López Obrador in March.

Biden will meet sep­a­rate­ly with Trudeau and López Obrador again on Thurs­day be­fore the lead­ers hold a tri­lat­er­al ses­sion in the midst of what is a big week for the U.S. pres­i­dent. Biden signed a $1 tril­lion in­fra­struc­ture bill in­to law Mon­day, held a vir­tu­al sum­mit with Chi­na’s Xi Jin­ping that night, and trav­elled over the next two days to pro­mote pro­vi­sions in the big spend­ing deal. He’s al­so try­ing to push through his so­cial ser­vices and cli­mate spend­ing plan.

There are grow­ing con­cerns in Cana­da about a pro­vi­sion in the spend­ing plan that would of­fer U.S. con­sumers a $7,500 tax cred­it if they buy elec­tric ve­hi­cles through 2026. The fol­low­ing year, on­ly pur­chas­es of elec­tric ve­hi­cles made in the U.S. would qual­i­fy for the cred­it. The base cred­it would go up by $4,500 if the ve­hi­cle was made at a U.S. plant that op­er­ates un­der a union-ne­go­ti­at­ed col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ment.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau departs on a government plane, Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2021 in Ottawa. Trudeau is flying to Washington for meetings at the White House. (Adrian Wyld /The Canadian Press via AP)

Cana­di­an Deputy Prime Min­is­ter Chrys­tia Free­land called the in­cen­tive a clear vi­o­la­tion of the new NAF­TA agree­ment. Trudeau, Free­land and oth­er Cana­di­an min­is­ters met with U.S. of­fi­cials on Capi­tol Hill on Wednes­day. And Cana­di­an For­eign Min­is­ter Melanie Joly said she raised con­cerns about the elec­tric ve­hi­cle pro­vi­sion with Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken last week.

Free­land said that for Cana­da, “Job one here in the U.S. this week is to re­al­ly make our Amer­i­can coun­ter­parts aware of the ex­tent to which their cur­rent ap­proach to this is­sue is a prob­lem for Cana­da and to re­al­ly ex­plain to them that the way they have for­mu­lat­ed this in­cen­tive re­al­ly, re­al­ly has the po­ten­tial to be­come the dom­i­nant is­sue in our bi­lat­er­al re­la­tion­ship.”

White House spokesman Chris Meagher said the elec­tric ve­hi­cle tax in­cen­tives are an es­sen­tial part of Biden’s push to link ef­forts to curb cli­mate emis­sions with job cre­ation in the U.S.

The U.S. and Cana­da, mean­while, have ex­pressed frus­tra­tion that López Obrador has failed to get on board with glob­al ef­forts to curb cli­mate emis­sions. The Mex­i­can pres­i­dent skipped this month’s U.N. cli­mate sum­mit in Glas­gow.

López Obrador’s gov­ern­ment, for its part, wants promised U.S. de­vel­op­ment funds for the North­ern Tri­an­gle coun­tries of Cen­tral Amer­i­ca to be firmed up. The Mex­i­can leader con­tin­ues to press the U.S. to fund an ex­pan­sion of his tree plant­i­ng pro­gram to Cen­tral Amer­i­ca.

Mex­i­co has worked with the Unit­ed States — un­der both Trump and Biden — to con­trol mi­grant flows and as­sist in re­turn­ing mi­grants to Cen­tral Amer­i­ca. The two coun­tries are still ne­go­ti­at­ing the court-or­dered re-im­ple­men­ta­tion of a Trump-era pol­i­cy known as Re­main in Mex­i­co, which forced asy­lum seek­ers to wait out their U.S. asy­lum process in Mex­i­co.

López Obrador has al­so men­tioned on mul­ti­ple oc­ca­sions his in­ter­est in the U.S. gov­ern­ment ex­pand­ing its tem­po­rary work visa pro­gram so more Mex­i­cans and Cen­tral Amer­i­cans can fill the de­mand for labour in the U.S. The tem­po­rary work­ers in turn could have ac­cess to the high­er pay they seek in the U.S. with­out be­com­ing part of the il­le­gal im­mi­gra­tion flow.

Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador addresses the United Nations Security Council, Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021. Obrador warned that the world is sliding from “civilization to barbarity” and called for the thousand richest people, the thousand largest private corporations and the 20 major economies to improve life for the 750 million people now existing on less than $2 dollars a day. (UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe via AP)

Ar­riv­ing in Wash­ing­ton on Wednes­day, Mex­i­co For­eign Af­fairs Sec­re­tary Marce­lo Ebrard said his gov­ern­ment would fo­cus on three is­sues: the pan­dem­ic, eco­nom­ic in­te­gra­tion and im­mi­gra­tion. On im­mi­gra­tion, Ebrard said Mex­i­co would try to ral­ly sup­port for two of López Obrador’s sig­na­ture so­cial pro­grams — tree plant­i­ng and youth job op­por­tu­ni­ties — to re­duce the push fac­tors of mi­gra­tion.

Ken Salazar, the U.S. am­bas­sador to Mex­i­co, re­cent­ly ex­pressed “se­ri­ous con­cerns” about the Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment’s at­tempts to lim­it com­pe­ti­tion in the elec­tri­cal pow­er sec­tor.

Trudeau and Biden are al­so ex­pect­ed to dis­cuss the fu­ture of an oil pipeline that cross­es part of the Great Lakes and is the sub­ject of ris­ing ten­sion over whether it should be shut down. Biden is caught in a bat­tle over En­bridge’s Line 5, a key seg­ment of a pipeline net­work that car­ries Cana­di­an oil across the U.S. Mid­west.

Michi­gan Gov. Gretchen Whit­mer, a De­mo­c­rat and Biden al­ly, has de­mand­ed clo­sure of the 68-year-old line be­cause of the po­ten­tial for a cat­a­stroph­ic rup­ture along a 4-mile sec­tion (6.4 kilo­me­ters) in the Straits of Mack­inac, which con­nects Lake Huron and Lake Michi­gan. The Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion has not tak­en a po­si­tion but is un­der in­creas­ing pres­sure to do so.

Cana­da last month in­voked a 1977 treaty that guar­an­tees the unim­ped­ed tran­sit of oil be­tween the two na­tions.

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As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Colleen Long in Wash­ing­ton con­tributed to this re­port.