“The overall goal is to build our economies from the bottom up and from the center out, building on the foundations laid by our free trade agreements with the region to better address inequality and lack of economic opportunity,” a senior official said. government to journalists in a call.
The plan aims to offer an alternative in a region where China has been expanding its sphere of influence. However, it is not clear how many countries would accept such an agreement.
The United States is organizing the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, a meeting in which Biden intends to address the migration and economic challenges of the region. On Monday, the White House said it would not invite Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, prompting Mexico’s president to skip the event.
Biden will present “an ambitious reform” of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the official said, adding that the United States would also seek an equity stake in the bank’s private sector lending arm to support the deployment of private capital.
Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas think tank, told a Senate subcommittee last week that the Biden administration should push for a regional trade initiative similar to the Indo-Pacific one announced by Biden during his Asia tour in May. .
However, the idea of creating a hemispheric-scale trade bloc has never taken off, in part because of protectionist sentiment among US unions and some lawmakers.
