The United States will not be represented at an Americas regional summit that begins tomorrow in Brazil.
Bloomberg reports that the gathering of the Latin American and Caribbean Summit on Integration and Development at a beach resort in Brazil's Bahia state will instead include nations that are not friendly toward the States, like Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela.
It is the first annual gathering on this topic but high-profile diplomats say the Unitd States exclusion is symbolic.
Read more here on each of the ways the U.S. role is waning in Latin America.
Source: Bloomberg
P.S. Sorry about the lack of photos, folks, my computer browser also is unfriendly right now.
I just hate the spin that Bloomberg tries to gives to this summit. So Latin American integration movements are really in detriment of the U.S.-Latin America relationship? How? Anything good for Latin America is bad for the U.S.? Yes, Latin America is trading more with China and Europe, but that is to be expected and you probably could say the same thing about Africa or South-East Asia (does Bloomberg knows about this globalization thing..?).
ReplyDeleteThe U.S. was not invited and that is supposed to be a big deal, even though the U.S. didn’t sought an invitation and there’s an incoming summit of the Americas in Trinidad & Tobago that does includes the U.S. Bloomberg does mention that the U.S. is still Latin America biggest trading and Investment partner (I did the research a few weeks ago… the U.S. export almost the same amount that it does to the far more prosperous countries of the European Union).
Finally, I really don’t buy into the narrative that the U.S. “remains aloof” from the region. Besides NAFTA, the U.S. pursued the DR-CAFTA, free trade agreements with Panama, Colombia, Peru and Chile. It did not with Venezuela (I don’t have to go into details why that’s not the case, right?), and neither Bolivia nor Ecuador are interested in free trade for ideological reasons-just ask the European Union. So who’s left? The countries of Mercosur are forbidden to sign free trade agreements with other countries (check this article for more info on this issue).
Sorry about the long rant, but the facts I quoted are there for everyone to see, but are ignored in favor of the narrative about the supposed U.S. aloofness from Latin America… or do they miss the good old days, when Nixon and Kissinger thought nothing about deposing the elected government in Chile..?