MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador gave the U.S. greenback a vote on confidence on Monday after he was requested if a weakening buck would possibly spur a transfer to diversify Mexico’s international forex reserves.

“We’re going to proceed contemplating the greenback because the world’s principal forex,” Lopez Obrador informed a press convention.

“We have now adequate causes to not transfer to different currencies,” he stated, underscoring Mexico’s “more and more shut” financial ties to the US.

America is by far Mexico’s largest buying and selling companion, with each economies carefully built-in over many years in sectors starting from power, autos and agriculture.

The greenback remained weaker in opposition to most of its main friends on Monday as fears persist a couple of potential recession in the US later this yr.

Requested if he would suggest that the central financial institution diversify Mexico’s international forex reserves, Lopez Obrador stated that “even with a monetary disaster sooner or later, the greenback would proceed to be crucial forex on this planet”.

Regardless of considerations over recession, optimistic financial indicators helped push Mexico’s peso on Friday to its strongest degree in opposition to the greenback since 2017.

The Mexican president’s remarks comply with feedback from Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a fellow leftist, wherein he expressed help for a substitute for the U.S. greenback for commerce in sure circumstances together with inside South America.