Gallagher quoted in NYTimes on China’s influence in Latin America

Kevin P. Gallagher, Director of the Global Development Policy Center at Boston University, was interviewed for a recent article on China’s economic influence in Latin America. 

Gallagher was quoted in a July 2018 article in The New York Times, entitled “From a Space Station in Argentina, China Expands Its Reach in Latin America.”  The article is nominally about the Chinese space station located in Patagonia but also links more broadly to a narrative about China’s growing economic and global influence. 

From the text of the article:

Trade between China and countries in Latin America and the Caribbean reached $244 billion last year, more than twice what it was a decade earlier, according to Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center. Since 2015, China has been South America’s top trading partner, eclipsing the United States. […]

“Latin America won the China lottery,” said Kevin P. Gallagher, an economist at Boston University. “It helped the region have its largest growth spurt since the 1970s.”

Yet, Mr. Gallagher said, the bounty came with significant peril. Industries like agriculture and mining are subject to the boom-and-bust cycles of commodity prices, which made relying on them too heavily a big gamble over the long term.

Gallagher serves on the United Nations’ Committee for Development Policy and co-chairs the T-20 Task Force on An International Financial Architecture for Stability and Development at the G-20. He previously served on the investment sub-committee of the Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy at the US Department of State and on the National Advisory Committee at the Environmental Protection Agency.   Gallagher has been a visiting or adjunct professor at the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University; El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico; Tsinghua University in China, and the Center for State and Society in Argentina.

Follow him on twitter @KevinPGallagher.

— Banner image from: elsol.com.ar