Biden hosts Latin American and Caribbean leaders to discuss economic issues, migration

President Joe Biden is hosting Latin American and Caribbean leaders at the White House on Friday to discuss how countries in the Western Hemisphere can tackle some of the most significant challenges facing the region, including how to reduce record flows of irregular migration and boost economic growth.

The gathering is the inaugural summit of countries’ leaders that have joined the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity, a Biden administration initiative first announced during the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles last year and officially launched in January.

The partnership’s goal, Biden said at the top of the meeting, is “to increase opportunity, and decrease inequity, to harness the incredible economic potential of the Americas and to make the Western hemisphere the most economically competitive region in the world.”

Biden promised “billions” channeled into a new investment platform toward building infrastructure, a new fund to support “nature-based” climate change solutions and a new program to help entrepreneurs in member countries fund and develop new businesses.

“The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation and the Inter American Development Bank are launching a new investment platform to channel billions of dollars toward building sustainable infrastructure in the hemisphere and strengthening critical supply chains, modern ports, clean energy grids and digital infrastructure,” he said.

Ahead of the summit, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said leaders would address how to tackle “the underlying economic drivers of irregular migration in our hemisphere.” Biden mentioned monetary contributions from the United States, Canada and Spain going to countries hosting refugees and that he has asked Congress to approve more money for that purpose and to increase legal pathways for migrants coming from Latin American and Caribbean countries.

On Friday morning, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told the leaders attending the summit the U.S. Treasury was working with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), a significant source of financing for countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, to reform its private sector arm, IDB Invest, and increase its capital. She also highlighted a new program, “BID for the Americas” to help American firms participate in regional contracts.

So far, ten countries from Latin America and the Caribbean, plus the United States and Canada, have joined the group. They are Barbados, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Peru, and Uruguay. They represent about 90 percent of the Western Hemisphere’s GDP and nearly two-thirds of its population. Of those countries, Ecuador, Uruguay and Barbados, a member of the Caribbean Community, have not signed free trade agreements with the United States.

Some major South American nations like Brazil and Argentina have yet to join the group, as well as the Caribbean Community, a regional organization comprising 15 members.

In the final summit declaration, the leaders committed to “establish a process for welcoming additional Western Hemisphere countries to join the Americas Partnership.”

According to the declaration, ministers of member countries will meet annually and country leaders every two years to check efforts to advance five priorities: “strengthening regional competitiveness and integration, fostering shared prosperity and good governance, building sustainable infrastructure, protecting the climate and environment and promoting healthy communities.”

Top of the agenda

At the top of the agenda of several leaders attending the meeting is ensuring companies in their countries continue to have strong access to American markets.

While the United States sees the partnership as part of a broader effort to counter China’s influence in the region, Biden officials previously signaled the initiative was not meant for countries to pursue free trade agreements with the United States. Jose W. Fernandez, under secretary of State for economic growth, energy and the environment, told the Herald in an interview in January the focus was instead on issues such as “more seamless customs processing,” supply chain integration and improving the business climate in the region.

Last month, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), the chairman of the Senate’s subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, asked the State Department and the White House to explain why the administration has changed the structure of the partnership, “shifting from pursuing text-based agreements with binding commitments and is instead developing a ‘forum’ intended to bring leaders together to broadly discuss areas of mutual interest and shared goals.”

He also asked for clarification on whether the partnership will create a pathway for negotiating trade agreements with participating nations that currently lack one.

Negotiating free trade agreements is not mentioned in the final summit declaration issued Friday.

“We call on the Ministers responsible for trade to develop inclusive and sustainable approaches to trade and investment that will support regional sustainable development and resilient supply chains for goods and services, enhance a predictable and transparent regulatory environment that can boost trade flows, and remove barriers to greater economic integration among our countries,” the declaration says.

The summit happens amid record numbers of migrants moving through the region and reaching U.S. borders. Notably, some of the biggest drivers of migrants coming to the United States, countries such as Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Haiti, are not members of the Americas Partnership, as the administration officials earlier noted the group is open to countries that “have a set of shared values and a vision for a prosperous hemisphere.”

U.S. immigration authorities have reported almost 1.5 million encounters at the U.S. borders with migrants coming from those four nations in the past two fiscal years.

But leaders and representatives of those countries did attend a meeting last month hosted by Mexico’s president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. He is not attending Friday’s summit but said he would deliver some of the concerns voiced by those countries to Biden, including calls to lift sanctions on Cuba, during a bilateral meeting they will have later this month in San Francisco during an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

Despite some expectations, the declaration issued by the leaders gathered at the White House did not include a reference to events in Venezuela, where the Nicolas Maduro regime is threatening to cancel the results of primary elections held by the opposition in violation of an agreement signed in Barbados between the two political forces that the United States helped broker.

Ahead of the summit, Biden met with Dominican Republican President Luis Abinader on Thursday to discuss Haiti’s security situation, which is fueling a record wave of migrants fleeing gang violence and poverty. The Haitian government suspended all flights to Nicaragua on Monday after reports of thousands of Haitians using the Central American country as a springboard to the United States.

The governments of Ecuador and Peru have been calling for help to fight increasing drug trafficking and violence in their countries, while Mexico, Colombia and several Central American nations have asked for more economic support to deal with the hundreds of thousands of migrants staying or crossing through their countries en route to the United States.