Without minimizing the ongoing security concerns south of the United States border, President Barack Obama and Mexico’s President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto have an opportunity today, as they sit down together for the first time, to enhance American public understanding of what is likely to become the most important economic relationship for the U.S.

Ask the average U.S. citizen about Mexico, and the issues that come to mind most prominently are drug violence, corruption and illegal immigration, according to a recent survey by strategic consultanting groups Vianovo and GSD&M.

The war on and between the Mexican drug cartels that supply the lucrative illegal U.S. drug market has battered lives as well as Mexico’s reputation. In 2009, the Pentagon, noting the rise in gang-related violence, warned that Mexico could become a “failed state.” But that overly dire prediction never materialized and the drug-related violence appears to be rapidly localizing and subsiding.

via Washington should pay more attention to maturing its cross-border economic relations with Mexico | Deseret News.