Trump’s dismissive comment about Latin America will hurt U.S. interests

Andres Oppenheimer

President Trump’s reaction when asked about his government’s future relations with Latin America — “we don’t need them” — was a needless display of political arrogance that will do little to help advance U.S. interests in the region.

Instead of saying that there is a great opportunity for Latin American democracies to become U.S. partners and help relocate American factories from China to the Western Hemisphere, which would help eliminate poverty, reduce migration and lessen America’s economic dependence on China, Trump needlessly snubbed the region.

He sounded like French Queen Marie Antoinette, who, during the French Revolution, was famously quoted as saying, “let them eat cake” when told that the people had no bread.

For the record, Trump was asked by a Brazilian reporter Monday night during his executive orders’ signing ceremony, “How do you see our relationship with Latin America and Brazil?” Trump responded, “Great. They need us much more than we need them. We don’t need them. They need us. Everybody needs us.”

His statement fell like a cold shower on many of my Trumpist friends in the region, because they had high hopes that his administration would be the most focused on Latin America in recent decades.

In a way, that may still be the case. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a former Cuban-American senator from Florida, will be the first Spanish-speaking top U.S. diplomat in recent memory. He has always been focused on Latin America.

Rubio’s No. 2 at the State Department will be former ambassador to Mexico Christopher Landau, who is also a fluent Spanish-speaker and whose father was U.S. ambassador to Paraguay, Chile and Venezuela.

Although there are many questions on how much power Rubio will have in the new administration — Trump has appointed several close friends as special envoys and ambassadors — there have never been such high-ranking Latin American experts at the helm of the State Department in recent memory.

That’s good news for the region, but the problem is that Trump himself has a negative agenda for Latin America: he sees the region only as a problem, rather than as an opportunity.

Trump’s inaugural address centered on the evils of an alleged “invasion” of immigrants — although the flow of immigrants fell by nearly 70% last year — Latin American drug cartels and his vow to take over the Panama Canal, despite the fact that it has been very well managed by Panama for the past 25 years.

The new president did not unveil a positive agenda for Latin America. He could have offered U.S. allies in the region the opportunity to explore investments promoting “nearshoring,” as economists refer to the trend of U.S. multinationals moving some of their factories out of China to reduce their dependence on America’s top geopolitical rival.

Many big U.S. corporations have already been moving part of their supply operations out of China, mostly to Vietnam and India, for fears that U.S.-China tensions will cause an interruption of their supply chains.

But most have gone to Vietnam or India, rather than to Latin America, which is much closer to the U.S. market and in the same time zone.

Some senior officials in the new Trump administration, such as newly appointed Special Envoy to Latin America Mauricio Claver-Carone, have a track record of advocating for an ambitious U.S.-Latin American “nearshoring” alliance with like-minded democracies.

I would bet that Rubio, Claver-Carone and others in the new administration will try to convince Trump to propose a positive agenda for Latin America, alongside his current immigration, drugs and tariffs threats.

But I wonder whether they will prevail over Trump’s nationalist-xenophobic extreme right wing allies. Even though they don’t represent the majority of U.S. public opinion, Trump relies heavily on them to fill the venues at his rallies. That allows him to claim a supposedly unprecedented popularity, despite the fact that he won only 49.8% of the popular vote.

Trump would have done himself a favor by pushing a positive agenda for Latin America. He still can do it, but he missed a precious opportunity to do so when talking about the region on his first day in office.