As we start thinking about U.S.-Latin America relations in the next presidency, most of
the issues will actually be bilateral.
The issues the United States faces with Brazil are very different than with Ecuador, than
with Mexico, compared to Venezuela.
But there are a few issues that are still regional, either in that all the countries
face them and they're issues that the United States cares about or they're issues that
can’t be resolved between one or even two one countries - that they demand a regional
solution.
There are three in particular that the next president of the United States will face.
There's security, immigration, and economic relations and ties.
The first, security, is obviously at the top of the agenda for the United States as well
as many of these countries.
We think often about terrorism, and there is some limited evidence of terrorist groups
operating in Latin America.
But the real issue for Latina America are drug traffickers and organized crime more
generally.
The United States is the largest consuming market for illegal drugs and those drugs come,
the vast majority, from Latin America.
Whether it's cocaine, heroine, imported marijuana, meth or other synthetics, they come up, many
of them through the Andean countries, through Central America, Mexico, and then to our markets.
And in return, tens of billions of dollars flow back into these countries into quite
sophisticated, far-flung organized criminal networks.
These networks have increased violence in recent years; they’ve corrupted many local
governments and economies, as well as in some places threatened even state and national
levels.
And this is an issue that concerns the United States and obviously concerns the countries
in which they operate.
We’ve had long-standing relations on security with many countries in Latin America: with
Columbia, with Mexico, and more recently we signed an agreement with Brazil and Bolivia.
But this is an issue that, while bilaterally is quiet important, will demand a regional
solution and is something the next president will have to face.
A second issue on the agenda for many Latin American countries and the United State is
the issue of immigration.
The vast majority of migrants that come to the United States are now from Latin America,
and many countries, particularly Mexico and Central American countries, ten percent of
their population or more now live in the United States.
So there are close ties through the peoples and communities with the United States.
In 2007 the U.S. congress failed to pass a comprehensive immigration reform, and since
then immigration has been a contentious domestic policy issue but it also has strong foreign
policy repercussions.
So the next president will face what to do with immigration.
But there maybe a huge opportunity during the next presidential term.
In the last couple of years, immigration trends have significantly changed.
In particular for Mexico, the largest sending country to the United States, this last year
we’ve seen what people call a “net-zero” flow of migrants: the same number of people
are coming in as going out.
So it’s a fundamental transformation of the way immigration works, and that may provide
the next president an opportunity to change immigration, to find some way to reform it
and have huge ramifications for foreign policy with many of these countries.”
The final issue for the president, in terms of U.S.-Latin America relations, is the economy
and economic ties.
When we think about the economy, or we think about globalization, usually foreign policy
experts turn to China, and China obviously is the one that people are watching.
But for the United States and thinking about growing out of our economic doldrums through
export-led growth, Latin America actually may be the answer.
While we export a hundred billion dollars worth of goods to China, today we export three
times that much, 300 billion dollars to Latin America.
Latin America has six hundred million consumers ready for U.S. goods, and more and more of
these are rising into the middle class, increasing their purchasing power that could be beneficial
for the United States as well as obviously their own countries.
But to take advantage of this, the next president of the United States needs to work with these
countries: how do we deepen ties with them?
There are smaller things the U.S. President could put on the agenda, things like improving
the visa process, speeding up the way businesses and people can come and go.
There are things like bilateral tax treaties that need to be signed to improve the way
businesses work on both sides of borders.
There are also issues such as standards and harmonization that make it easier to build
products one place and then send them elsewhere.
There are more ambitious things that the president could put on the agenda.
Things like free trade agreements with many of our South American partners.
All of this the next president, along with his counterparts, will have to work to figure
out how to deepen relationships but make it complementary not substitutive - how to make
it a win-win for the United States but also for the countries that we'll be trading with.
So these are challenges but also opportunities for the next president.