The Latin American Report # 614

In an attempt to align his internal policy with the foreign one interests, Trump suggested this Sunday that the United States could buy Argentine beef to lower the prices at home. According to AP, the problem is associated with an intense drought and a reduction in imports from Mexico, a classic, natural, and powerful supplier of the US market.

In discursive terms, regardless of whether the commercial dynamic materializes or not, this could be one of the last steroids that Trump provides to Javier Milei before the critical elections next Sunday, whose result will tell us how much organic governability the conservative leader will have. Washington favored the Pink House with a credit swap line of the same value as the previous bailout via IMF—20 billion dollars—, taking other extraordinary steps such as the purchase of Argentine debt. Furthermore, there is talk of another 20 billion dollars coordinated by the White House that would come from private funds.

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Update on Colombia

Late on Sunday night, the US president again attacked his Colombian counterpart Gustavo Petro, calling him a lunatic and threatening to announce tariffs this Monday. According to Trump, there is no fight against drug trafficking from Bogotá. "They are a drug manufacturing machine," he added.

Bolivia

Rodrigo Paz, the man who surprisingly won the first round in the presidential elections, maintained his lead and won the ticket to run the political business in the Great House of the People after his victory in the run-off this Sunday. A centrist politician with a right-leaning inclination, he was ultimately the one who capitalized on the people's feeling of weariness towards the administration of the Movement for Socialism (MAS in Spanish), self-destructed by internal struggles led by former president Evo Morales and his former protégé and outgoing president Luis Arce. The latter was ultimately overcome by a quite adverse economic situation, with a chronic lack of dollars—partly due to the loss of the capacity to produce gas and other items—, dizzying inflation, pressure from fuel subsidies, and some obstacles that Morales himself placed for him in Congress.

Paz, who won with 54% of the votes according to the preliminary, official count, has hinted that he does not foresee a very aggressive reform program that would imply a shock, but it does seem that he will make his presence felt in foreign policy and with some 180-degree turns in the economy. For example, there is talk of eliminating fuel subsidies or considerably reducing public spending. For the moment, nodes like Washington and Buenos Aires celebrate that a critical country is no longer led from or with the left.

"Congratulations to the president-elect of Bolivia, Rodrigo Paz Pereira, for his victory in the elections this Sunday and to the entire Bolivian people for their commitment to democracy and their desire for renewal. It is a historic day for Bolivia, leaving behind 20 years of the failed '21st century socialism' model that has done so much harm to our region," said the Argentine leader. "After two decades of mismanagement, President-elect Paz’s election marks a transformative opportunity for both nations," stated the head of Foggy Bottom in the same vein.

Although relatively unknown, in truth Paz Pereira is hardly an outsider. He is the son of Jaime Paz Zamora, a former president (1989-1993) with a leftist past. Thus, there are networks surely arising from this fact which are propelling him. Many times, politics is a cycle. An interesting point of Paz's triumph is that it seems Bolivians do not want to move away too much, or too quickly, from the social model that the MAS tried to advance, with strong social assistance. That's why they preferred him over a Milei-like candidate such as Tuto Quiroga.

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This is all for today’s report.