Left to their own defenses… Latin America and China

Maybe there’s a simple reason Latin American countries are “turning left”?  The U.S. administration is encouraging business ties to a Communist country at the expense of democratic allies. 

BEIJING, Jan. 17 — Bilateral trade between China and the United States increased dramatically in 2006, when China for the first time surpassed Mexico to become the second-largest trading partner of the US.

Trade volume between the two countries reached 238.7 billion U.S. dollars in 2006, an increase of 24.6 percent from 2005.

China imported goods worth 53.94 billion U.S. dollars from the US, up 22.9 percent year-on-year, and exported 184.76 billion U.S. dollars, 25.1 percent more than last year. China achieved a trade surplus of 130.8 billion U.S. dollars, a 26 percent increase.

The US is now China’s second-largest trade partner, biggest export market, sixth-largest import market and third-largest technology import market.

(Source: China Daily via Xinhuanet)

The claim that the U.S. opposes what used to be the ONE and ONLY overtly “leftist” government — Cuba — because it has a communist government makes no sense.  It makes more sense that the problem was Cuba’s business relationships with everyone EXCEPT the U.S.  Honduras nationalized the U.S. owned oil-tank farms the other day without much opposition from the U.S., maybe because they’re still doing so much business with the U.S. (and they’ll still be buying oil from U.S. companies… just a different one than Exxon-Mobil). 

The U.S. — for a lot of reasons — is abandoning their tradtional business relationship with Latin America, and opting instead to do business in China.  Latin American conservatives — being conservative — by definition are slow to change… including their economic thinking.  They’re still tied to what seems to be in their long-term worst interest. 

 In addition to their anti-yanquí rhetoric, the “leftist” presidents (of Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Panama, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and now Ecuador) are “progressives” … and making progress in changing traditional patterns… building trade relationships with Europe and Asia, or within a Latin America. 

Mexico, which has always been tied U.S., is a slighly different case… there is NAFTA.  Still, the “left’s” call for renegotiating the treaty, and building those new markets, was popular in the last election.  Even within PAN, you’re starting to see people who recognize the need for this (I give Vincente Fox a lot of credit for selling Mexico to non-traditional trading partners, like New Zealand and Japan).  But, mild change may not be enough to keep PAN in power. 

 If you look at the voter results, PAN is actually losing support, even though they still had enough to squeak through in the Presidential election.  Fox got 42.5 percent of the total vote, with 5 percent coming from the Greens and Social-Democratic “botique” parties.  So… figure 37.5 percent for PAN in 2000, versus only about 30 percent in 2006… and that’s with a massive effort to paint AMLO as a “dangerous leftist”. 

AMLO’s loss was only by a third of a percentage point, and the “left” (if we include PRI) won 2/3rds of the vote.  Like other Latin American leftist and social-democratic parties, the Mexican left is looking to break U.S. economic “hegonomy.”  And, AMLO had support from middle-class voters, and some of the business leadership. 

Once this sinks in… I’m expecting PAN will be making even more concessions to the left…or lose still more support.