Biden to tout economic plan at divisive Summit of Americas

Summit of the Americas Illustration: Chen Xia/GT

With the Summit of Americas being held under the shadow as some regional major countries snubbed the gathering divided by values and ideology, US President Joe Biden is expected to host the summit on Wednesday and tout a new "ambitious" economic package that resembles its Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) to counter China's influence.

From the Growth in the Americas initiative launched in 2019 to Biden's Build Back Better World plan, those US-initiated economic plans are widely seen as empty promises that only meet Washington's interests and some experts said the upcoming new package would only serve as another political tool for the US to maintain its hegemony in the region.

Biden is scheduled to arrive in Los Angeles on Wednesday to host a three-day summit meeting, according to US media reports, during which the US leader is expected to announce a new economic framework for Latin America focusing on supply chains, climate change, jobs and trade. The framework, known as the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity, apparently aims at countering China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), some media reports said.

The US administration will announce $300 million in funding to address the food issue in the region and will propose reforms to the Inter-American Development Bank to encourage more private investment in the region. Also on Tuesday, US Vice President Kamala Harris announced pledges of $1.9 billion in investments by private companies in Central America.

Hours before Biden was to arrive, his administration announced a new Americas Health Corps that aims to improve the skills of 500,000 health workers across the region, building on the lessons from COVID-19, which hit the Western Hemisphere especially hard, the AFP reported.

The training will cost $100 million, although the US will not contribute all of it and will seek to raise funds, including through the Pan-American Health Organization, according to media reports.

With the BRI gaining more support in Latin America, some Chinese observers doubt Biden's economic package for the Latin America, driven by US political motives in countering China and without fully taking into account the real needs of Latin American countries, and could bring any real benefits to the region. Especially when the US is facing a declining influence with its economy struggling with surging inflation and weak investment, there has been a growing voice to reject US hegemony in the Latin American continent, experts said.

"This week, the entire continent will voice its rejection of US hegemony," Jorge Arreaza, former foreign minister of Venezuela, was quoted as saying in media reports recently. Such strong words also showed that the US can longer take the continent as its own backyard, and regional countries seek to get rid of US influence and make more independent decisions based on their own interests, according to experts.

'Lip service'

The new economic package targets mobilizing new investment in the region, fortifying supply chains, promoting de-carbonization and biodiversity, facilitating inclusive trade and update the "social contract" between governments and their people, Politico reported on Tuesday, noting that these proposals are unlikely to satisfy the desire among Latin American countries for more trade access in the US.

Axios also noted that the American partnership isn't a traditional trade agreement, where countries lower tariffs to gain market access, and several countries such as Ecuador and Uruguay have expressed frustration that Biden has been unwilling to negotiate such agreements.

The US aims to lead a trade and investment arrangement that excludes China in Latin America, reflecting its anxiety over China's presence in the region that is efficient and full of vitality, gradually exceeding the advantages of the US. but the problem is whether such a US-led trade and investment initiative could fit the needs of Latin American countries, Zhou Zhiwei, an expert on Latin American studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.

"Given severe protectionism and a high level dependence on external markets, the continent has not formed a whole-process supply chain without a common market. This is a huge gap between the Latin American market and the US' policy design, not to mention that for some Latin American countries, their biggest trading partner is China," Zhou said.

Total trade between China and Latin America reached 451.59 billion yuan ($67.5 billion) in 2021, a 41 percent increase from the previous year, according to data from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce. China remained the second-largest trading partner of the Latin America and a series of BRI projects have yielded positive results.

It's not the first time that the US has touted some economic incentives to the region. From its past experiences, Chinese experts believe that those economic packages offer just lip services rather than concrete cooperation.

"The Trump administration offered the Growth in the Americas initiative in 2019, and then Biden touted its B3W and now it's this new economic package. But if Republicans take office in the future, will those policies remain effective? We don't know," Jiang Shixue, director of the Center for Latin American Studies at Shanghai University, told the Global Times.

Rejecting US hegemony

After Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrado confirmed a boycott of the summit as the White House refused to invite leaders from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, key nations in Central America are following his lead by dispatching only lower-level delegates instead of their leaders to the summit, CNN said, noting that this protest underscored the struggle to exert US influence in the region.

Latin American leaders hold a complex attitude toward Biden's proposals. On one hand, Latin American countries do not want to lose their autonomy and are dissatisfied with US hegemony, but on the other hand, they continue being under the economic and geopolitical influence of the US from which they could gain some benefits, Xu Shicheng, a research fellow in Latin American studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.

Heinz Dieterich, a Mexican scholar and director of the Center for Transition Sciences and World Advanced Research Project, said the US is a shadow of the imperial power it once was, with incompetent leadership-elites and no strategic clue to what its role in the future multipolar world is and can be.

"What projection of power, leadership and economic development can such a country exercise in its own backyard, the Western hemisphere, where, of course, the China-led Belt and Road Initiative with increasingly important trade, investment and financial participations produce an ever better road of development than Western neoliberal imperialism?" Dieterich asked.

What happens in Los Angeles is of no global strategic importance to anybody. It is a sideshow in a secondary geopolitical area, the results of which are only important for the November midterm elections and Biden′s and the Democrats' future, the Mexican scholar said, noting that it's essentially a show for internal electoral consumption and interests of the Republican and Democratic Party.