Presidents from Latin America to the US: We have a lot to give

Several Latin American presidents asked this Thursday at a forum in Washington that USA look at Latin America as a place in which to invest thanks to its enormous potential and at the same time helping to generate more prosperity and more inclusive and sustainable societies.

“It is not begging for things, but Uruguay “It has a lot to give to the rest of the world, in this case to the United States.”stated the Uruguayan president, Luis Lacalle Pou, one of the leaders who spoke today at the Responsible Investment Forum of the Americas-IDB Alliance, organized by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

The president made these statements at a table in which the Dominican president, Luis Abinader, and the Costa Rican president, Rodrigo Chaves Robles, also participated, which took place after the inauguration of the forum by the president of the IDB, Ilan Goldfajn, and the secretary. of the US Treasury, Janet Yellen.

The three leaders will participate tomorrow, along with other Latin American presidents, in the summit of the Alliance for Economic Prosperity (APEC), an initiative of President Joe Biden that seeks to deepen the integration and economic growth of the region.

“Being here is already news,” stated Lacalle, who assured that the relationship between Uruguay and the United States was “a little left aside” but that it now enjoys “optimism”. “This initiative by the president is hopeful and opens an interesting door,” he claimed.

In his speech, the Costa Rican president, Chaves Robles, harshly criticized the situation of the United States’ trade relations with Latin America.

“USA. is treating the presidents of the region without sufficient differentiation in the economic part. “We would all be much better off, including the United States, if there was greater cooperation and reciprocity.”he claimed.

“If many countries are doing our job,” he added, “The big question is if we are bringing more of the world to our countries and more of our countries to the world, why isn’t the United States taking differentiated actions for each country?”

All this in a context in which the North American power “It has been distracted by unexpected and enormously important events such as the regrettable war in Europe” or Israel, which is now “going to focus a large portion of the United States’ foreign policy.”

Therefore, forums like this must be used to see how “How can this powerful nation help countries that want to help each other generate more prosperity and generate more inclusive and sustainable societies.”

Dominican President Abinader stated for his part that the “great opportunity” of the APEC summit is to move from “diagnosis” of seeing Latin America as the place to invest thanks to its potential in issues such as natural resources and spending “to concrete facts.”

“We are not talking about donations. What we need is to be able to work together on prosperity, development, new technologies, semiconductors. Aspire to move to cutting-edge technologies. We have the challenge of APEC to turn all these ideas into facts,” he claimed.