Abstract
Trump’s accession to the US Presidency had significant consequences on Latin American domestic politics and diplomacy at the regional and continental levels. In the realm of international trade, the US president has equally focused on undoing decades-old policies of building a multilateral, rules-based global economic environment. Since January 2017, Donald Trump has mostly delivered on his promises to break with past policies and attitudes and to roll back the liberal internationalism that his predecessors since World War II strove to build. However, we observe a gap between discourses and factual concerns by the US authorities and intervention in the continent. This chapter aims at assessing this foreign policy through an empirical exploration of words and deeds on a three-sector-based approach: trade policy, foreign aid policy, and crisis policy.
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Notes
- 1.
We prefer the term “progressism” to “left-wing” as the Latin American left in that period has been highly heterogeneous.
- 2.
Joseph S. Tulchin, Latin America in International Politics: Challenging US Hegemony (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2016).
- 3.
Ronaldo Munck, Contemporary Latin America (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 140.
- 4.
Andrea Oelsner, International Relations in Latin America: Peace and Security in the Southern Cone (New York: Routledge, 2005).
- 5.
Pia Riggirozzi and Diana Tussie, eds., The Rise of Post-Hegemonic Regionalism: The Case of Latin America (London: Springer, 2012).
- 6.
CBC, “NAFTA Is the Worst Trade Deal Maybe Ever Signed Anywhere,” September 27, 2016, https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/nafta-is-the-worst-trade-deal-maybe-ever-signed-anywhere-1.3780231.
- 7.
Congressional Research Service, “NAFTA Renegotiation and the Proposed United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA),” February 26, 2019, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R44981.pdf.
- 8.
CNBC, “TPP Nations Agree to Pursue Trade Deal Without US,” May 21, 2017, https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/20/tpp-nations-agree-to-pursue-trade-deal-without-us.html.
- 9.
Pablo Calderón-Martinez, “Mexico Negotiates NAFTA with Painful History in Mind—And Elections on the Way,” The Conversation, February 2, 2018, http://theconversation.com/mexico-negotiates-nafta-with-painful-history-in-mind-and-elections-on-the-way-90643.
- 10.
Ibid.
- 11.
Pacific Alliance, Official Statement of Puerto Vallarta, XIII Pacific Alliance Summit, July 24, 2018.
- 12.
In that perspective, Mexico intensified its relationship with the European Union and on April 21, 2018, upgraded its trade agreement with the EU. Mexico and Canada also decided to strengthen their economic relationship.
- 13.
Global Development Policy Center, “2019 China–Latin America Economic Bulletin,” 2019, https://www.bu.edu/gdp/2019/02/21/2019-china-latin-america-economic-bulletin/.
- 14.
Fermin Koop, “Belt and Road: The New Face of China in Latin America,” Dialogo Chino, April 25, 2019, https://dialogochino.net/26121-belt-and-road-the-new-face-of-china-in-latin-america/.
- 15.
Congressional Research Service, “Foreign Aid: An Introduction to US Programs and Policy,” April 16, 2019, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R40213.pdf.
- 16.
Ibid.
- 17.
James McBride, “How Does the U.S. Spend Its Foreign Aid?” Council on Foreign Relations, October 1, 2018, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/how-does-us-spend-its-foreign-aid.
- 18.
Demetri Sevastopulo, Aime Williams, and Jude Webbe, “Donald Trump Cuts Off Aid to Three Central American States,” Financial Times, June 17, 2019, https://www.ft.com/content/f3cd73d2-9135-11e9-aea1-2b1d33ac3271.
- 19.
U.S. Department of State, “United States–Mexico Declaration of Principles on Economic Development and Cooperation in Southern Mexico and Central America,” December 18, 2018, https://www.state.gov/united-states-mexico-declaration-of-principles-on-economic-development-and-cooperation-in-southern-mexico-and-central-america/.
- 20.
ECLAC, “ECLAC’s Executive Secretary Calls on the UN System to Address the Fundamental Causes of Migration,” February 26, 2019, https://www.cepal.org/en/news/eclacs-executive-secretary-calls-un-system-address-fundamental-causes-migration.
- 21.
Kevin Parthenay, La crise au Venezuela et déstabilisation du multilatéralisme latino-américaine, Note de recherche no. 50 (Paris: IRSEM, 2018).
- 22.
Kevin P. Gallagher and Margaret Myers, “China–Latin America Finance Database” (Washington, DC: Inter-American Dialogue, 2019).
- 23.
Ibid.
- 24.
Ibid.
- 25.
United Nations Human Rights, Office of the High Commissioner, accessed on October 21, 2019, https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Countries/LACRegion/Pages/VEIndex.aspx.
- 26.
White House, Office of the Press Secretary, “Blocking Property and Suspending Entry of Certain Persons Contributing to the Situation in Venezuela,” Executive Order no. 13692, March 9, 2015, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2015/03/09/executive-order-blocking-property-and-suspending-entry-certain-persons-c.
- 27.
U.S. Department of State, “United States Strategy for Engagement in the Caribbean,” Press Release, June 21, 2017, https://www.state.gov/press-releases/.
- 28.
Ben Jacobs, “Trump Threatens ‘Military Option’ in Venezuela as Crisis Escalates,” The Guardian, August 12, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/11/donald-trump-venezuela-crisis-military-intervention.
- 29.
In particular, the Guatemalan intervention of 1954 and the Panamanian intervention of 1989.
- 30.
Reuters, “Pence Says ‘Failed State’ in Venezuela Threatens United States,” August 14, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-venezuela-pence-idUSKCN1AU1SN.
- 31.
Juliette Dumont, “De la coopération intellectuelle à la diplomatie culturelle: les voies/x de l’Argentine, du Brésil et du Chili (1919–1946)” (PhD diss., Université Sorbonne Nouvelle—Paris 3, 2013).
- 32.
U.S. Department of State, “United States Strategy for Engagement in the Caribbean.”
- 33.
Evan Braden Montgomery, In the Hegemon’s Shadow: Leading States and the Rise of Regional Powers (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016).
- 34.
Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay and Peru, to which Guyana and Santa Lucia later joined.
- 35.
Elodie Brun and Kevin Parthenay, “The United Nations Faced to the Venezuelan and Nicaraguan Crises: A Plural Actor,” Unpublished working paper, forthcoming 2020.
- 36.
Created on March 22, 2019 by the Santiago Declaration between the governments of Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, and Peru.
- 37.
Euractiv, “US Warns Off Venezuela Allies at Lima Group Meeting,” 2019, accessed online on October 21, 2019, https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/us-warns-off-venezuela-allies-at-lima-group-meeting/.
- 38.
Ibid.
- 39.
DW, “How to Resolve the Venezuelan Debt Conundrum,” 2019, https://www.dw.com/en/how-to-resolve-the-venezuelan-debt-conundrum/a-47483575.
- 40.
Gérard Latulippe, “Russie et Venezuela: la géopolitique du pétrole,” Huffington Post, August 26, 2017.
- 41.
Parthenay, La crise au Venezuela.
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Parthenay, K. (2020). Trump’s US Foreign Policy and Latin American Multilateralism: An Assessment of Words and Deeds. In: Quessard, M., Heurtebize, F., Gagnon, F. (eds) Alliances and Power Politics in the Trump Era. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37258-3_12
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