The Inter-American Development Bank, which is the biggest multilateral lender to Latin America, would support new projects through grants, lending and new programs. The U.S. is the bank’s largest shareholder, with 30% of voting rights.
WASHINGTON,
US— Treasury Secretary
Janet Yellen wants Latin America to trade
more with the United States as part of an initiative that so far has failed to
disrupt China’s dominance in global
manufacturing.
Still, U.S.
efforts to diversify supply chains with “trusted partners and allies” including
select South American nations have “tremendous potential benefits for fueling
growth in Latin America and the Caribbean,” Yellen said in a speech delivered
Thursday.
Yellen
kicked off an Inter-American Development Bank investment event on the sidelines
of the inaugural Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity Leaders’ Summit,
which will be hosted at the White House on Friday.
The heads
of state of Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay, the Dominican Republic and Costa
Rica were in attendance.
Yellen, who
regularly talks about her friendshoring strategy for increasing supply chain
resilience by
working primarily with friendly nations as opposed to geopolitical
rivals like China,
laid out her vision of new U.S. investment in South America at the development
bank on Thursday.
Latin American businesses “will increasingly
have the chance to lead in new areas of clean energy, for example, helping
create vertical supply chains by using locally extracted lithium in local
battery production,” Yellen said.
“Medical
equipment and pharmaceutical companies can grow and innovate to meet increased
demand,” Yellen said, and skilled workers can produce automotive chips
necessary for electric vehicles.
The
Inter-American Development Bank, which is the biggest multilateral lender to
Latin America, would support new projects through grants, lending and new
programs. The U.S. is the bank’s largest shareholder, with 30% of voting
rights.
Increasingly,
policymakers in the U.S. have expressed concern about China’s influence at the
bank. While the Asian superpower holds less than 0.1% voting rights, it holds
large economic stakes in some of the 48 member countries of the bank.
In 2022,
Latin American and Caribbean trade with China rose to record levels, exporting
roughly $184 billion in goods to China and importing an estimated $265 billion
in goods, according to a Boston
University Global Development Policy Center analysis.
And
diplomatic relations between Latin America and China have also increased. In
March, Honduras cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan in favor of China, following
the steps of El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama and the Dominican Republic in
turning their backs on Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as its own territory and has
been increasingly sending ships
and warplanes across
the Taiwan Strait in an effort to intimidate the population of 23 million, who
strongly favor the status quo of de-facto independence.
The IDB’s
president, Ilan Goldfajn, told The Associated Press that the
U.S. is still a most influential member at the bank.
“Whenever
we have a U.S. company in the bidding process, the probability of winning is 70
to 80%,” he said. “So what we need is more U.S. companies involved. But if
you’re not involved, this opens the door for anybody” to invest in Latin
America.
U.S.
lawmakers this year proposed the
Inter-American Development Bank Transparency Act, which would require the Treasury Department
to issue a report every two years on the scope and scale of Chinese influence
and involvement in all aspects of the bank, including a list of Chinese-funded
projects and an action plan for the U.S. to reduce Chinese involvement at the
bank. The bill has not moved out of committee.
Latin
America will be a region of increased focus in the next year, as Brazil takes
the presidency of the Group of 20 international forum.
A Treasury
official told the AP that Yellen will be traveling frequently to South America
and Latin America over the next year, due to Brazil’s G-20 presidency.
***Fatima Hussein
reports on the U.S. Treasury Department for The Associated Press. She covers
tax policy, sanctions and any issue that relates to money.