Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a lifelong populist and face of Mexico’s left, actually has a lot in common with Trump.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has repeatedly said his relationship with President Donald Trump is based on mutual respect.

But that’s not stopping Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador from heading to the White House for his first face-to-face meeting with Trump on Wednesday.

But their meeting, which marks López Obrador’s first trip abroad since becoming president of Mexico in December 2018, has been the target of widespread criticism in Mexico and among Democrats because of a perception that it benefits Trump politically and its timing as coronavirus cases continue to rise alarmingly in both countries.

López Obrador has sent the signal to Trump that “you can bully Mexico, you can threaten Mexico, you can call Mexicans rapists and the Mexican president will be happy to get on a plane to meet with you anyway.”.

Trump has referred to López Obrador as a leader “who I like and respect, and has worked so well with us.” The Mexican leader has repeatedly said his relationship with Trump is based on mutual respect and recently has been thanking Trump for sending ventilators to Mexico during the pandemic.

López Obrador, known by his initials as AMLO, was previously so critical of Trump that he went so far as to compare the U.S.

López Obrador also agreed to allow asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico while they wait for their court hearings in the U.S.

Now, critics say López Obrador’s trip is just the latest sign of the Mexican government being nonconfrontational in the hope that it will benefit Mexico by appeasing its powerful northern neighbor.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador during the ceremony of the deployment of its National Guard.

The U.S.-Mexico relationship is “based on friendship and it’s also an indispensable commercial and economic relationship, so that’s why the trip to the United States,” López Obrador said late last month when he announced the visit.

“It’s puzzling to Mexican leaders in Mexico and here to think that somehow this trip would be advantageous to Mexico or AMLO because of the means Trump has to exploit the visit and to manipulate it to extract Mexican American and Latino votes through this visit.

business leaders are hopeful López Obrador will use the trip to show that Mexico wants U.S.

López Obrador has railed against major outlets like Mexican newspaper Reforma for what he says is unfair or fake reporting in a similar manner as Trump

But López Obrador’s nationalist attitude and focus on domestic issues is not unfamiliar in the United States, as Trump, too, has pressed for an America First agenda throughout his presidency