Last week, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador canceled a Pacific Alliance summit scheduled to be held in Mexico this month, after Peru’s Congress prevented President Pedro Castillo from traveling abroad. The incident highlights a challenge for the group, which is floundering for a purpose and facing internal tensions.
On the sidelines of last week’s G-20 leaders’ summit, Argentina and China struck a deal to increase their currency swap program. By doing so, however, China is playing to the worst economic instincts of Argentina’s Peronist government, for which every economic problem can be solved by simply throwing yet another currency plan at it.
The government of newly elected Colombian President Gustavo Petro listed countering deforestation as one of its top priorities. But those efforts promise to raise tensions between the central government and local farmers, who in recent years have been on the receiving end of heavy-handed government efforts to counter deforestation.
