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Argentina president delivers damning speech to Biden at a fractured Summit of the Americas

Among ideological fractions and absentees at the summit, President Fernández criticized the exclusion of nations and called for the realignment of regional institutions.

(CN) — President Joe Biden called for unity as he closed the week-long Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, which was overshadowed by national absentees and Argentina's president’s critical speech directed at the U.S.

Biden’s exclusion of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba led to boycotts from national leaders of Mexico, Bolivia, Honduras and Guatemala. Brazil’s right-wing populist president Jair Bolsonaro U-turned on his decision not to attend after being given a bilateral meeting with Biden, while Argentina’s center-left President Alberto Fernández remained on the fence until the week before the 9th summit.

The U.S. president presented two main initiatives: a new economic association named the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity and the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection, which aims to transform the approach to managing migration in the region.

Although 20 nations signed the declaration, the absence of the leaders of Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador — key nations that lie along the migration pathways that the U.S. is trying to tackle — casts doubt over its long-term viability.

Fernández, as head of the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), was given a prime slot to deliver his speech to the rest of the region’s leaders and promised to speak on behalf of the absent countries of ECLAC. On the second day of the summit, the UN body released a report that found, in the context of “sharp economic slowdown, rising inflation and a slow and incomplete recovery of labor markets,” regional poverty is expected to reach 33.7% and extreme poverty 14.9%.

Driven by the discord over Biden’s guest list and a sense of diminishing U.S. influence in the region, Fernández took to the stage with a strengthened position to deliver a damning discourse.  

His 8-minute speech delivered broad criticism aimed at Washington, its financial institutions and regional organizations, while asking for the resignation of the head of the Organization of the Americas (OAS). Fernández began by denouncing the continued economic blockades of Cuba and Venezuela as well as excluding them along with Nicaragua from the summit.

“Cuba has endured a blockade of more than six decades imposed in the years of the Cold War and Venezuela endures another one while a pandemic that devastates humanity drags with it millions of lives,” said Fernández. “Such measures seek to condition governments, but in reality, they only hurt the people.”

Biden’s decision to exclude nations based on their lack of democracy was difficult to digest for other regional leaders, particularly due to the U.S.’s close relations with dictatorships and theocracies. Biden is set to meet with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman next month, who according to a CIA investigation ordered the assassination of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Fernández then directed his attention to the Trump administration and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“President Biden,” said Fernández, “the years prior to your arrival in government were marked by an immensely harmful policy for our region deployed by the administration that preceded you. It is time for those policies to change and for the damage to be repaired.”

For the Argentine leader, the Trump administration intervened in talks between the IMF and the previous center-right Argentina government to “facilitate an unsustainable indebtedness in favor of an Argentine government in decline,” which was carried out “with the sole purpose of preventing what ended up being the electoral triumph” of Fernández’s coalition government. The country has a debt of $57 billion to the IMF — the largest in the institution’s history, from which “all the Argentine people are suffering today,” added Fernández.

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The Argentina president then questioned the head of the OAS, Uruguayan Mauricio Claver-Carone, who he compared to a paramilitary police officer “that facilitated a coup d’état in Bolivia,” which led to its former socialist president Evo Morales seeking exile in Mexico and later in Argentina.

“The OAS, if it wants to be respected and return to being the regional political platform for which it was created, must be restructured by immediately removing those who lead it,” demanded Fernández, who then took aim at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). 

“The regional development bank, without further delay, must return its governance to Latin America and the Caribbean,” expressed Fernández. The bank is currently led by the American Mauricio Claver-Carone, a position that had been reserved for an official from a lending country — i.e., a citizen from Latin America.

Fernández also proposed some initiatives. The first was that no future host of the Summit of the Americas should be allowed to exclude other nations — a rebuke of Biden’s guest list. The second related to the impacts on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with the third targeting climate change.

“I propose two major objectives,” said Fernández. “Let us organize food and protein production continentally and develop our enormous energy and mineral potential critical to the ecological transition.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has paralyzed exports of critical food and chemical supplies, a big driver of global food inflation. With Argentina being a global leader in soy derivatives, second-largest exporter of corn and seventh-largest exporter of wheat, Fernández is positioning Argentina in a key role in how the world adjusts to disruptions in food production.

Argentina is also discovering its potential global role in the ecological transition with its largely untapped lithium reserves — a key component for batteries of electric vehicles. Fernández is keen to boost the country’s lithium development, which holds 9% of the world’s reserves — the third largest behind Chile and Australia.

Off the main stage, Fernández and his entourage, which included foreign minister Santiago Cafiero, health minister Carla Vizzotti and president of the lower house Sergio Massa, were busy on the sidelines of the summit, holding multiple meetings with international corporations. 

They met with General Motors representatives, where they announced an investment of $350 million with the production of the Chevrolet Tracker model and discussed a further $900 million investment subject to certain bills passing in Argentina’s Congress related to the production of electric vehicles.

Specific to these bills is the development of lithium. General Motors’ president Shilpan Amin highlighted the chemical as key for “Argentina’s possibility of becoming a regional reference” for the development of electric vehicles, “taking advantage of the country’s lithium potential.”

Last Thursday, the Argentine entourage also met with Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who announced an investment of $1.2 billion across Latin America to promote the region’s digital transformation, including the development of a subsea cable that will run along the sea floor from the East Coast of the U.S. to the province of Buenos Aires.

Argentina’s leader also held talks with Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as well as the UN’s Secretary-General António Guterres.

With the closing of the Summit of the Americas, attention turns to the next G7 meeting in the Bavarian Alps at the end of this month, a meeting that Germany invited Fernández to attend. In a busy period for the Argentine president, he is also scheduled for a face-to-face meeting with Biden in Washington at the end of July as a reward for attending the regional summit.

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Categories / International, Politics

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