Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto’s visit to the White House last week was greeted by a throng of protesters whose chants were so loud, they could be heard in the Oval Office. Peña Nieto was in Washington not to discuss the deteriorating security situation in his country, the discovery of still more mass graves in the countryside or the staggering irregularities that have been recently disclosed about his government’s investigation into the forcible disappearance in September of 43 students from the town of Ayotzinapa in Guerrero state. He was there to talk about the money.

Peña Nieto visited Washington under the auspices of the High-Level Economic Dialogue (HLED), an initiative meant to promote competitiveness and foster the growth of the U.S. and Mexican economies. While the Ayotzinapa students apparently came up during the presidents’ conversation, President Barack Obama ultimately reiterated his support for the Mexican government. In doing so, he ignored the criticisms of human rights organizations and the demands of protesters who have gathered in the streets of cities in the U.S. and Mexico. But why does the U.S. government continue its uncritical stance toward its southern neighbor?

At first glance, the answer might appear to lie in the United States’ problems with police impunity at home. When a Mexican official in Washington was questioned before the meeting whether Ayotzinapa would be on the agenda, he made an explicit comparison to the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. “Within the United States,” he said, “we know there has been this kind of violence in the area of Missouri, to mention just one case.” Activists have used this line of criticism as well, arguing that those who live in glass houses can’t throw stones.

But hypocrisy in U.S. foreign policy is as old as the country itself. The disconnect between our government’s rhetoric and practice began with those truths that we held to be self-evident. It’s not a desire to avoid looking hypocritical that has kept Obama from speaking out; it’s economic interest.

The HLED was announced just as Peña Nieto was putting the finishing touches on his economic reform agenda, which includes overhauling education standards, shaking up the existing telecommunication monopolies and opening the energy sector to foreign investment. It’s clear that the HLED was created to support these reforms, with each of these areas explicitly addressed in the published list of HLED priorities.

Critics have argued that Peña Nieto’s economic reforms will do little to improve the standard of living for ordinary Mexicans while bringing big gains to Mexican and transnational banks and corporations. Ignoring the thousands who have taken to the streets to protest the reforms, the HLED shows how committed the United States is to the Peña Nieto strategy. Given the gains that U.S. companies stand to make from, for example, the newly opened Mexican oil industry, it’s easy to see why.

There is a financial motivation behind U.S. support for Peña Nieto’s security agenda as well. Much of the support that the United States has earmarked for Mexico under the Mérida Initiative — a George W. Bush–era bilateral program to combat drug trafficking and organized crime that Obama has continued — never leaves the U.S.: The $1.2 billion (PDF) that the U.S. government has spent on Mexican security so far has gone to providing training to Mexican security forces and judicial officials and purchasing equipment such as surveillance gear and Black Hawk helicopters.