Proposal in Congress seeks to end long U.S. neglect of Latin America. Fear of China could push it forward | Opinion

Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is known to make some amazingly senseless statements, but he was right on the mark last week when he chided President Biden for the U.S. “abandonment” of Latin America in recent decades.

Lopez Obrador told a press conference at the opening of a U.S.-Canada-Mexico summit on Jan. 9 that the United States should “do away with this abandonment, this disdain and forgetfulness for Latin American and the Caribbean.”

Referring to Biden, the Mexican president added, “You hold the key in your hand” to put an end to such neglect, and suggested that Washington come up with an ambitious regional plan such as President Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress in the 1960s.

Indeed, the U.S. government has not produced a hemisphere-wide trade and investment initiative since South America’s leftist governments — led by former Venezuelan ruler Hugo Chavez — torpedoed President George W. Bush’s Free Trade Area of the Americas at the 2005 Summit of the Americas in Argentina.

Facing strong resistance in Latin America, recent U.S. administrations have pretty much given up on seeking a bold Latin American and Caribbean economic initiative, turning their attention instead toward more-pragmatic trade partners in Asia.

Now, an ambitious draft bill circulating in the U.S. Senate seeks to come up with a new, more gradual, U.S. hemispheric trade and investment proposal.

It is framed as a bill to counter China’s growing influence in Latin America and to encourage U.S. multinationals to secure their supply chains by moving some of their manufacturing plants away from China and closer to home.

The draft bill circulated by Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, the 202-page “Americas Act,” calls for, among other things, creating a path for willing Latin American democracies to join the Mexico-Canada-U.S. free-trade agreement.

That would allow countries such as Ecuador, Uruguay, Paraguay, the Dominican Republic and other potentially bigger ones like Argentina — if a pro-business government wins this year’s presidential elections — join the North American trade bloc.

“It is high time that we place hemispheric integration at the center of our foreign policy,” the draft legislation’s introductory text says. “Our new “Cold War” with China has highlighted the problem, as demonstrated by the COVID-19 supply-chain disasters.”

It adds that, “What we do not have is a platform for integration. There is no progressively growing trade body that links the United States with our hemispheric allies.”

The legislation also proposes to create a $40 billion borrowing authority within the U.S. Treasury Department and a $5 billion package of tax exemptions for U.S. companies willing to bring manufacturing plants from China to the region.

On the immigration front, it calls for issuing up to 1 million seven-year non-immigrant visas for Latin Americans who can provide direct care as nursing assistants, or home health aides to elderly people in the United States.

The number of U.S. individuals over 65 is expected to soar from 48 million in 2015 to nearly 73 million by 2030, and there is a huge shortage of eldercare givers, the draft bill says.

In addition, the draft bill proposes creating an “American University of the Americas” that focuses on science, technology and engineering. It would be modeled after similar institutions in Dubai, Cairo and Nigeria.

When I asked Cassidy in an interview who will pay for all of this, he said that the entire legislation would pay for itself.

Much of the funding would come from closing a loophole by which China sends more than $100 billion a year to the United States in goods tariff free. Under current U.S. Customs’ so called “De Minimis” rules, individual packages worth less than $800 from anywhere don’t pay U.S. duties.

Granted, the proposed legislation is still a long shot and has yet to get a Democratic co-sponsor. Democratic congressional sources tell me they have been negotiating with Cassidy’s staff for the past six months and may reach a deal to make it a bipartisan bill soon.

For sure, the proposal would trigger angry complaints from companies such as Amazon and eBay, which critics say are making huge profits from the $800-a-package exemption.

Still, it’s good to hear that there are discussions in Congress about expanding U.S.-Latin American trade and investment ties. If nothing else, the fear of further U.S. supply chain disruptions from China and of China’s growing presence in Latin America may prompt Washington to end years of “forgetfulness” of the region.

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