Evo Morales declared he would run in Bolivia’s next presidential election as the candidate for the ruling MAS party—two years before the ballot and before MAS had even held its primary. It is the latest gambit in Morales’ increasingly bitter struggle with President Luis Arce, as both seek to lead the party into the 2025 election.
No one paying attention would disagree with Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s assessment that the “war on drugs” has failed miserably. But highlighting the failure of previous strategies to tackle drug trafficking does nothing to protect the embattled Petro from what has happened to Colombia’s cocaine trade since he took office.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s international agenda in the month of September has been emblematic of his foreign policy across his entire five years in office: ineffective, inconsistent and often invisible. That lack of focus is why AMLO has seen many of his foreign policy sorties simply fall to the wayside.
The election of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, or AMLO, in July 2018 was supposed to result in a radical transformation for Mexico. But since taking office in December 2018, AMLO has struggled to deliver on his campaign promises. After having to play catchup during his first two years in office to Donald Trump’s quixotic threats linking trade and immigration, he has more recently had to reboot relations with the U.S. under President Joe Biden.
Despite being in the midst of its rainy season, Panama is experiencing one of its driest periods on record. The lack of rainfall means that the Panama Canal—a vital conduit for global maritime trade—is facing severe challenges, with the implications extending beyond Panama’s borders to affect international trade and global supply chains.
Earlier this year, the global economy experienced an important milestone that, though it went largely unnoticed, scholars may look back on as a marker of the beginning of a new era, with economic but also geopolitical significance: For the first four months of 2023, Mexico surpassed China as the top trade partner of the United States.
It may not be a return of the “Pink Tide,” but the region’s left has been showing signs of a revival. Perhaps more than questions of right and left, though, what most characterizes South America today is a sense of instability and democratic fragility. What’s next for the continent?
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva used the recent G-20 Summit to announce that his key focus for Brazil’s G-20 presidency, which begins in December, will be ending global hunger by 2030. Unfortunately, Lula’s other comments at the summit ensured that nobody paid attention to or cared about his agenda for the coming year.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump upended what was once a relatively staid global economic and trade system. For all of the upheaval he created, though, Trump left office with only one clear-cut accomplishment: an updated NAFTA deal. And even as Trump sowed chaos in America’s trade relationships, most of the world reinforced its commitment to trade liberalization.
For the current GOP candidates, calls for the U.S. to invade Mexico have the twin benefits of making them look tough while also potentially appealing to Republican voters in the Trump faction. But these calls also betray three sad truths about U.S. foreign policy generally, and Republican foreign policy in particular.
Violence and corruption in Central America, particularly in the Northern Triangle countries, is causing a wave of outward migration. Since taking office, the Biden administration has pledged to tackle the root causes of the problem, which the Trump administration’s restrictive measures and pressure on regional governments did nothing to address. Meanwhile, efforts at reform across the region face opposition from entrenched interests that benefit from the status quo.
At last month’s BRICS summit, the government of Argentina promised to join the organization, which hopes to de-dollarize the global economy. That same week, however, Argentine voters made it clear that come October, they’ll elect a president who opposes joining BRICS and will increase the use of the dollar at home.
A group of five will soon be a concert of eleven. At last week’s summit of the BRICS nations, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa agreed to invite Ethiopia, Argentina, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates to officially join the group on Jan. 1, 2024. The expanded BRICS shows its members’ dissatisfaction with the Western-led economic and political order.