President Biden arrived in Los Angeles on Wednesday to formally open the Summit of the Americas with a plan to revive Latin American economies in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic as his administration is navigating fallout from a partial boycott of the conference by key regional leaders.
In remarks officially kickstarting the summit, Biden is set to unveil an economic framework that the White House asserts will mobilize private investment in the region, strengthen supply chains, create clean energy jobs and address climate change, according to a senior administration official.
The president is also expected to lay out plans to reinvigorate the Inter-American Development Bank and strengthen health security, including training 500,000 public health and medical professionals within five years.
The Latin American and Caribbean region was among those hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic, accounting for more than 40% of the total global reported deaths, according to the White House. The region has also grappled with economic collapse, amplified by global inflation, as well as environmental disasters and political instability.
Biden will take the stage at Microsoft Theater before at least 23 heads of state from the Western Hemisphere, including Canada, Brazil and Argentina. Notably missing will be Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who announced Monday he would skip the event and instead send his foreign minister. Obrador is boycotting the summit over the White House decision to exclude antidemocratic leaders from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
The leaders of Bolivia, Guatemala and Honduras are also not attending — dealing a blow to Biden’s efforts to reassert U.S. leadership in the region on issues of economic cooperation, migration and climate change.
White House officials insist the controversy over the guest list will not undermine the president’s efforts to boost the region’s economies. Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday announced nearly $2 billion in new private investment in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, bringing the total in corporate pledges for investment in the region to $3.2 billion since she began the initiative last year.
The president’s economic framework, however, is unlikely to satisfy those looking for more trade access. Administration officials emphasized that it builds on existing free trade agreements but declined to say how much the U.S. would invest in the plan. The framework has yet to have any countries sign on as participants.
“We’re not negotiating a trade agreement that would go to Congress but rather building on existing agreements to actually promote a race to the top,” a White House official said, insisting that the plan will receive widespread support among some countries in the region.
U.S. national security advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters aboard Air Force One that Biden would make a financial commitment to the private sector financing arm of the Inter-American Development Bank. That funding would be used to enhance the region’s infrastructure and clean energy, as well as access to digital technology.
Biden is also expected to preview in his speech a migration declaration that will be unveiled on Friday. The declaration comes as a caravan of thousands of migrants, mostly from Central America, Venezuela and Haiti, sets off near Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala earlier this week to protest their conditions.
The administration has struggled to manage a record flow of migrants at the U.S. southern border over the last year. Border officials made nearly 202,000 apprehensions in April, a slight drop from March, which set a 22-year high.
The declaration is expected to include commitments from the region’s leaders to host the record number of migrants moving through their countries, White House officials said. It’s unclear which countries will end up signing on to the plan. White House officials are adamant that Mexico, Latin America’s second-most populous country and a key U.S. partner in migration management, will participate.
