Gallagher: Trump Builds Walls, Xi Builds Bridges in Latin America
Kevin Gallagher, Professor of Global Development Policy at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published a recent Op-Ed on the 2016 United States presidential election, and how the U.S. has regressed in terms of economic relations with Latin America while China is strengthening economic ties with the region.
Gallagher’s Op-Ed, entitled “Trump Builds Walls, Xi Builds Bridges in LatAm,” was published on November 16, 2016 in The Financial Times.
From the text of the Op-Ed:
Latin America is experiencing its worst economic growth — projected to be negative this year – since the lost decade of the 1980s. At this crucial time, the United States is turning its back and stepping backward from Latin America while China takes further steps forward in its economic relations with the region.
President elect Trump has pledged to walk away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), as well as steeply raise tariffs on Mexican manufacturing. He also says he will scrap the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill and engage in questionable fiscal and monetary policies. To top it off, he pledges to deport Mexican and other Latin Americans from the United States and build a wall so they can’t come back.
From 2003 to 2013 Latin America experienced a “China Boom” registering economic growth of 3.6 per annum — higher than any period since the 1970s. The region sent iron ore, soybeans, petroleum , copper and other commodities to China at unprecedented rates. Now that China’s economy is in transition, however, demand for those commodities are down, and so are Latin American economies.
You can read the entire Op-Ed here.
Kevin Gallagher is the co-chair of the Task Force on Regulating Capital Flows and has served as an advisor to the Department of State and the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States, as well as to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Gallagher has been a visiting or adjunct professor at the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy; El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico; Tsinghua University in China, and the Center for State and Society in Argentina.