‘We could have done much better’: Americas leaders agree on migration but little else
When 20 countries in the Western Hemisphere agreed on a set of migration policies on the sidelines of a regional gathering last week in Los Angeles, president Joe Biden called it “a historic commitment.”
But while the migration deal seems the central outcome of the Ninth Summit of the Americas, it was primarily a U.S. priority and not even part of the event’s official agenda — adding to the disconnect felt by some leaders who traveled to L.A. eager to engage with the United States on issues like trade, investment and financing but left without a breakthrough.
The summit achieved “mixed results,” said Richard Feinberg, a professor emeritus at the University of California at San Diego and former National Security Council official who participated in the first summit in Miami in 1994.
Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken “gained some goodwill for the United States, leaders and ministers got to know each other better, and the summit catalyzed some potentially innovative policy initiatives, notably on migration and climate change. But with better and smarter preparations, it could have been so much more,” he said.
Poor planning and ideological divides over the exclusion of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua threatened to torpedo the event before it even started, drawing attention away from the meeting’s agenda and pushing aides to spend significant political capital just to secure attendance. The White House prolonged the drama by refusing to say until the last minute who was finally participating. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador skipped it altogether.
Despite all the boycott threats, most leaders showed up.
“Frankly, getting everyone in the same room was a win, given the ideological divisions that have undermined regional cooperation in recent years,” said Benjamin Gedan, acting director of the Wilson Center’s Latin American Program. “It was refreshing to see a U.S. president so focused on Latin America. That said, for leaders in Latin America and the Caribbean, the most important yardstick for the summit was new U.S. investment in the region and trade opportunities.”
“Unfortunately, the White House had little to offer in either category,” Gedan added.
Different priorities
Part of the problem is the disconnect between U.S. policy goals and other countries’ priorities.
The need to strengthen responses to climate change was a shared concern widely supported among many leaders. But they also wanted to talk about more urgent issues like economic recovery from the pandemic, debt relief, access to new financing and direct U.S. investment.
The U.S. government made some meaningful financial commitments, like a pledge of $331 million in food security aid. Still, ideas like reforming the Inter-American Development Bank were not presented in detail, nor how the administration plans to fund many of its proposals, partly because the agenda was developed too close to the June gathering.
Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a former Florida representative, tapped by the White House to help organize the event, said she pushed economic issues to the center of the discussion, but she only took the special adviser role in April.
Some countries also resented that the scale of the promised U.S. aid is small when compared to the support given to Ukraine, a point made by the prime minister of Belize during the plenary.
Countries like Ecuador, interested in free trade agreements with the U.S., left mostly empty-handed. The South American nation is already negotiating free trade agreements with several countries, including China.
Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso, who joined the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and announced a plan to regularize thousands of Venezuelan immigrants, pressed the point that more trade would mean Ecuadorians would choose to stay home instead of migrating.
“We can’t be the only nation in [South America’s] Pacific coast that has no free trade agreement with the United States,” he said during brief remarks at an Atlantic Council event after the summit’s conclusion last Friday. “More commerce implies more jobs in Ecuador, and that means there is no outward migration of Ecuadorians.”
The mismatch also came to public light during a meeting between Harris and several Caribbean leaders after the White House announced a new partnership to promote climate adaptation and clean energy programs. When the Biden administration wanted to talk about climate change and transitioning away from fossil fuels, Caribbean leaders pushed back and raised other urgent challenges like debt relief, access to financing and food security.
“We had a meeting with the Caribbean nations, which for them, the issue of food insecurity is an immediate and urgent crisis,” said Mucarsel-Powell in an interview. “They left that meeting understanding that the president was going to make certain commitments to help immediately with the food insecurity issues in the Caribbean nations.”
Biden, who crashed the meeting after it had started, assured the heads of states present that he wanted to “intensify relations.”
“I’m here not to tell you anything but to hear what’s on your minds,” he said. “This is a partnership.”
The tone resonated around the table and won praise by the Jamaican prime minister, who called the summit “a success” that “signaled a very important shift in how the region sees the United States.”
“I believe President Biden was able to assure the leaders of his genuine interest in the region,” Prime Minister Andrew Holness said during the Atlantic Council event. “As to whether or not we will see the tangible outcomes from these [initiatives], we will wait patiently as we will continue to engage and participate to get the results.”
The Jamaican prime minister told the Herald that while there are not many details about what these programs will look like, “that gives you flexibility about what you can do.”
But if the summit was short of more concrete or ambitious propositions, as many observers noted, it was not all the administration’s fault. Many populist leaders in the region, like Mexico’s López Obrador or the Argentinian President Alberto Fernandez, chose during discussions about the summit or even their time at the event’s plenary sessions to play domestic politics and back up the regimes in Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, highlighting the erosion of democratic values since the first hemispheric gathering in 1994.
Rather than discussing challenges like inflation, debt and economic recovery from the pandemic, “leaders seemed to want to focus on the things that divide the region, including the attendance list,” said Eric Farnsworth, a former State Department official and vice president of Americas Society/Council of the Americas.
“It all adds up to a region that is heading in the wrong direction and a distracted Washington that views the region primarily through a domestic lens,” he added. “Collectively, with a different vision for regional cooperation and mutual interest, we could have done much better.”
This story was originally published June 14, 2022 at 11:27 AM with the headline "‘We could have done much better’: Americas leaders agree on migration but little else."