Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador says he feels so badly for Americans being harmed by Joe Biden’s soaring gas prices that he is inviting U.S. citizens to drive south of the border to fill up and take advantage of the cheaper prices in Mexico.
“While we’re waiting for prices to go down, we have decided that it was necessary for us to allow Americans who live close to the borderline so that they could go and get their gasoline on the Mexican side at lower prices,” Obrador said via an interpreter on Tuesday as he met with President Biden in the Oval Office of the White House, according to a White House transcript.
“And right now, a lot of the drivers — a lot of the Americans — are going to Mexico, to the Mexican border, to get their gasoline,” he said.
While most of the United States has seen the price of gas fall under $5 per gallon this week, it is still more than a dollar cheaper in Mexico, Obrador said.
“Right now, a gallon of regular costs $4.78 average on this side of the border. And in our territory, $3.12,” he said.
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Indeed, in California, gas is about $6 a gallon as of Thursday, according to AAA.
Signs in Tijuana, which is across the border from that state, advertise gas as “Cheaper than in the USA.”
The bargain isn’t quite as clear in other border states.
Is the price of gas seriously hurting your family budget?
The average price per gallon in Arizona is $4.90, and in Texas, it’s $4.14.
Meanwhile, gas is not $3.12 everywhere in Mexico. The average price per gallon there was $4.41 on Monday, according to GlobalPetrolPrices.com.
Obrador has had an adversarial relationship with Biden and was one of several leaders from south of our border who refused to attend the president’s big Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles in June.
Biden suffered stiff rebukes from foreign leaders for not inviting Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua to the meeting, and Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Bolivia and El Salvador refused to attend.
Still, it is hard not to see the dichotomy in the fact that even as hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants are streaming across the border to get into the U.S., Americans are heading into Mexico for gas because Biden’s policies have driven prices so high.
The irony was not lost on Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who blasted Biden for the situation.
“For me, the key takeaway was the Mexican president talking about how now Americans are going across the border into Mexico because gas is cheaper there,” Jordan told Newsmax.
“If that isn’t a picture for just how dysfunctional, how bad the Biden administration has been, I don’t know what is,” he said.
.@Jim_Jordan: “The Mexican President [was] talking about how now Americans are going across the border into Mexico because gas is cheaper there. If that isn’t a picture for how dysfunctional, how bad the Biden admin. has been, I don’t know what is.”
FULL: https://t.co/wlrOiU5W6Z pic.twitter.com/K9CCT7DjjR
— Newsmax (@newsmax) July 12, 2022
Meanwhile, only two weeks ago, when gas was at its highest per gallon point in history, Biden and his surrogates were telling Americans that we would have to suffer even higher prices in order to beat Russia and Vladimir Putin, not to mention to usher in Joe’s fantasy green energy revolution.
During a visit to Spain on June 30, for instance, Biden was asked how long he expected Americans to pay high gas prices, and he replied, “As long as it takes so Russia cannot, in fact, defeat Ukraine and move beyond Ukraine.
“This is a critical, critical position for the world. Here we are.”
Several months before that, Biden Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm admitted that the war in Ukraine gave his administration the excuse to push more green energy policies.
“This crisis in Europe and the crisis our allies are facing and the reduction of supply of natural gas and oil from Russia creates a moment that we should be acting … and this is a moment for Congress to be able to act,” Granholm said in March.
“It’s an urgent moment,” she added.
Even Biden himself agreed with the concept of using Ukraine as an excuse to push green policies.
“It should motivate us to accelerate the transition to clean energy,” he said in March as he announced bans on Russian fuel imports.
All this is causing Americans to drive across the border to fill their gas tanks.
This is the situation Joe Biden is forcing on our great, but struggling, country.
