MEXICO CITY -- Acting Secretary of State John Sullivan is traveling to Lima, Peru, for the Summit of the Americas. He is expected to meet with Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto.

The encounter will take place as tensions have increased over trade disputes and the caravan of Central American immigrant activists heading for the U.S.-Mexico border. The meeting during the summit will be an opportunity to smooth things over, but politics may also get in the way.

Christopher Lundry has a doctorate degree in political science from Arizona State University and teaches at El Colegio de México, a prestiged institute of higher education specialized in social sciences and humanities. He thinks one of the current difficulties in diplomacy with the U.S. is president Donald Trump’s unpredictability.

“Trump seems to change his mind depending on who he talked to fifteen minutes prior,” Lundry said.

The researcher thinks Trump avoids the summit to escape confrontations.

“There’s so much news coming about the scandals in the Trump administation, and he’s sort of saying, ‘well. I’m not going because of Syria,’ but it’s obviously also a way for him to escape from this,” said Lundry.

But Peña Nieto might be playing his last cards before leaving office this year.

“It’s hard to say what Peña Nieto is thinking, because he’s on his way out, and he may want to leave on a firmer ground as being more vocally opposed to Trump, whereas up to this point, where he has been soft pedaling."

But a topic from the summit that interests both delegations is Venezuela’s democracy, which has seen a crackdown on protests, and regional elections postponed by President Nicolás Maduro, who is boycotting the Summit.