President Joe Biden will seek regional consensus on a new economic agenda to build on existing trade agreements with Latin América and present a plan to tackle increasing migration when he hosts the Summit of the Américas, senior U.S. officials said on Tuesday.
By Reuters – Matt Spetalnick
May 31, 2022
Previewing Biden’s priorities for the June 6-10 gathering in Los Angeles, administration officials said his message will be that “we can’t do business as usual” in the hemisphere. But they offered few specifics on how he would address the challenges exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Summit preparations have been clouded by the threat of an embarrassing boycott by some regional leaders, including Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, if Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua are excluded.
Washington hopes López Obrador will attend, but is confident his absence would not detract from efforts to address migration or hurt cooperation on the U.S. southern border, one official told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The summit is being convened in the United States for the first time since the first such gathering in Miami in 1994, as Biden seeks to reassert U.S. leadership and counter China’s growing clout. He and other leaders are due to arrive on June 8.
The United States has said it only wanted leaders of governments that respect democracy to attend, and last week Biden’s summit coordinator said the leftist governments of Venezuela and Nicaragua would not be invited. He said a decision on Communist-ruled Cuba would be up to the White House.
“We don’t have a final list,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.
One of Biden’s summit goals will be to help the region recover from the economic of the pandemic.
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Read More: Reuters – Biden to push new economic agenda, migration plan at Americas summit
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