NEW ORLEANS — For a summit of three countries doing nearly $1 trillion worth of business with each other every year, President Bush's two-day meeting with his Mexican and Canadian counterparts began Monday as a decidedly low-voltage affair.
But despite the quiet start, the annual event is taking place against the backdrop of the U.S. presidential campaign, which has deepened the political sensitivity of the leaders' efforts to expand trade and wrestle with other issues, such as immigration and border congestion.
At the end of a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Bush said that the talks came at an "opportune time" to reaffirm the trade relationship among the three countries -- an unstated reference to the campaign to succeed him.
President Felipe Calderon of Mexico was more direct, saying that the North American Free Trade Agreement "has come under criticism." And in a photo session with Bush, he noted that although the United States was "going through an electoral process," the two countries needed to solve immigration issues "with respect and responsibility."
The meeting is the fourth annual conference among the leaders of the United States, Canada and Mexico to deal with mutual economic and security issues. It is the last one scheduled before Bush leaves office in January.
The summit will focus on trade, immigration, and cross-border drug and weapons smuggling, just as free-trade agreements and NAFTA in particular are under political attack more than at any time since the U.S.-Canada-Mexico agreement began eliminating tariffs and other barriers to North American trade 14 years ago.
Three-way trade among the United States, Canada and Mexico has grown since 1994 from about $290 billion to $930 billion, according to U.S. government statistics.
But Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, long an opponent of the pact, said the increase was largely the result of a "massive surge in imports" into the United States, bringing with it what the group calculated was a 691% increase in the trade deficit attributed to NAFTA.
And as fears grow that the U.S. economy has fallen into recession, supporters of the trade deal have faced calls for changes, first during the presidential primary in Ohio and now in Pennsylvania, where steel mills have closed from Pittsburgh to Bethlehem.
