Trump Moves to Take Leadership of Regional Development Bank Away From Latin American Nations
SEPTEMBER 8, 2020
by ARIELA RUIZ CARO
Four Latin American countries have called to postpone the election of the president of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), scheduled for September 12 and 13. Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica and Mexico proposed suspending the election until March 2021 to prevent Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser for Latin America, the Cuban-American Mauricio Claver-Carone, from taking the powerful regional post.
On June 16, the Trump administration launched Claver-Carone’s candidacy for the presidency of the Bank that bills itself as “the leading source of development financing for Latin America and the Caribbean”. [1] Sixteen Latin American countries have announced support for the U.S. candidate as others reportedly are coming under heavy pressure to agree to Trump’s proposal.
Claver-Carone’s bid for power has sparked a controversy in large part because it breaks with the Bank’s 50-year tradition of being run by a president from a Latin American nation. The pretext for proposing a U.S. candidate is supposedly to fulfill its commitment to help Latin American and Caribbean economic recovery in the face of the pandemic.
The justification sounds good, but it is not true. The truth is that the U.S. president seeks: 1) to curry favor among conservative Cuban and Venezuelan-Americans, 2) to counter the growing presence of China in the IDB and in the region by transferring hegemonic power disputes between the two countries to a U.S.-controlled Bank, and 3) to maintain an important position of economic and political power following his likely defeat in the Nov. 3 presidential elections.
More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/09/08/trump-moves-to-take-leadership-of-regional-development-bank-away-from-latin-american-nations/
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