Follow Nahal on Twitter.| Follow Ryan on Twitter. The Summit of the Americas wraps up today, with the results decidedly mixed. The refusal of several Latin American leaders, including Mexico's Andrés Manuel López Obrador to attend, cast a shadow over the gathering the whole week. The boycott was sparked by President Joe Biden's decision not to invite the non-democratic regimes of Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba. But Biden didn't appear to second-guess that choice in public, stressing that promoting democracy in the region remains a priority. That didn't mean shunning every authoritarian-leaning leader who did show up in Los Angeles: Biden met with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, whose actions and pronouncements have often been compared to former President Donald Trump, and who recently even cast doubt on Biden's 2020 victory. The public portion of the session was, umm, cordial. The summit provided an important platform for the United States to assure its Latin American partners (and Canada!) of its commitment to them. And the Biden administration unveiled several major initiatives aimed at partnering with those countries in areas ranging from health security to migration. Still, the economic framework the U.S. offered up is not the same as the trade deal some Latin American states crave, and many of the financial pledges made on the various fronts could fail to materialize. Some highlights: MIGRATION: Today, the delegations are expected to sign on to the "Los Angeles Declaration on Migration ." The agreement commits the countries to certain principles and goals, summed up by an administration official as "stability and assistance for communities, legal pathways, humane border management, and coordinated emergency response." Among other things, the governments are supposed to agree to collectively expand temporary worker programs as well as other legal channels for migration, including refugee resettlement. The United States promised to "surge support" for countries that are home to large refugee and migrant populations. Idealistic? Perhaps. But it's worth noting that the declaration acknowledges that the United States is not the only country in the region facing a migration challenge. As The Associated Press points out: "Colombia and neighboring South American countries host millions of people who have fled Venezuela. Mexico fielded more than 130,000 asylum applications last year, many of them Haitians, which was triple from 2020. Many Nicaraguans escape to Costa Rica, while displaced Venezuelans account for about one-sixth the population of tiny Aruba." ECONOMY: Biden announced the "Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity," an initiative aimed at working with regional leaders on everything from building more supply chain resiliency to investing more in climate-related industries. Biden promised to "reinvigorate" institutions like the Inter-American Development Bank. Vice President Kamala Harris, meanwhile, announced more than $1.9 billion in private sector commitments to aid northern parts of Central America. HEALTH & FOOD SECURITY: The United States and the Pan American Health Organization are launching the Americas Health Corps . The White House says it "will provide basic and specialized training to 500,000 public health, health science, and medical professionals throughout the region within five years." The United States also promised $331 million to support food security needs and humanitarian aid in the hemisphere. Our friend Ryan Berg of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said of the summit so far: "What's struck me the most is that U.S. announcements toward the region have been detail-sparse. For instance, the Biden administration is unveiling its 'Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity.' This plan is far less detailed than Biden's Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, announced a few weeks ago in Asia. Moreover, the economic framework appears to attempt to leverage current trade agreements and development architecture to bring more trade and investment to the region with prioritization and changes in rules, as opposed to tapping new streams of money or making sweeping policy changes." Another friend, Jason Marczak of the Atlantic Council, reminds us: "The attention to Latin America and the Caribbean cannot end in LA. After a steady stream of summit announcements from economic partnership to health, migration, and climate, the focus must now shift to holding governments accountable that agreements don't just sit on paper but are rigorously implemented. That has been the criticism of summits past, and, especially with growing Chinese competition, cannot be repeated this time." Also:
Silenced diaspora: They pour drinks. They clean rooms. Latin American workers wish they had more say at Summit of the Americas, writes Cindy Carcamo. China gloats: China's infamously snide foreign ministry spokesperson is very much enjoying the fallout of the Mexican leader's decision to stay home. A quick hello here from Nahal Toosi, senior foreign affairs correspondent at POLITICO. I'm co-piloting today's edition with the too-talented-to-measure Ryan Heath. One day I hope to reach a summit — of a mountain. COPENHAGEN DEMOCRACY SUMMIT Follow the world's leading democracy summit via livestream. Former President Barack Obama delivers remarks today, and he's expected to touch on themes such as "disinformation, the need for inclusive capitalism, inequality, and the decline in political institutions." His timing is fortuitous, coming right after the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol held its first public hearing. SHANGRI-LA DIALOGUE — ALL EYES ON TAIWAN Singapore is once again a center of diplomatic action today, the site of the Shangri-La Dialogue, which centers around defense ministerial discussions. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is the biggest name attending. "Taiwan [is] the most obvious potential flashpoint in a region riven with potential tensions," said James Crabtree, who organizes the event for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, adding Russia's war against Ukraine "led threat perceptions to rise all over Asia." Among defense ministers, both the U.S. and China are turning up: U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will speak Saturday, followed by Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe on Sunday, which should lead to interesting consultations between Wei and Beijing Saturday night, as he plans his response to Austin. Austin and Wei met this morning. More on that meeting. POLITICO's Stuart Lau , who's on-the-ground in Singapore for the event, told Global Insider that Wei is most likely to make headlines around:
- Taiwan, and by extension, China-U.S. relations;
- China-Russia ties;
- China's security deal efforts in the South Pacific.
The inexperienced new French defense minister, Sébastien Lecornu, is attending, and will celebrate his 36th birthday during the dialogue. Canada's defense minister, Anita Anand, is flying in. For the U.K., Jeremy Quin will deputize for Ben Wallace. Australia's Richard Marles will make his global stage debut, and the Solomon Islands — the center of an uproar about a new security agreement with China — will participate for the first time. WTO MINISTERIAL PREVIEW Trade ministers are gathering from Sunday in Geneva for the World Trade Organization's 12th ministerial conference, known among trade insiders as "MC12." Fork in the road: Beyond the circular talks on a potential IP waiver for Covid-19 vaccines, and efforts to end subsidies that encourage overfishing, the elephant in the room is the future of the multilateral trade body itself. If WTO members can't get their act together this time, the fear is that the the world's youngest truly global institution will fall into irrelevance, and the global economy could splinter even further into competing economic blocs: with governments unable to construct trade deals, and unlikely to avoid expensive subsidy races for their favored industries, or anything they deem essential to sovereignty. INTERVIEW — WTO BOSS WARNS AGAINST ECONOMIC COLD WAR World Trade Organization's Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala spoke with POLITICO's Sarah Anne Aarup. In a pointed response to recent comments by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen supporting "friendshoring" approaches to supply chain Okonjo-Iweala chided leaders, for "talking very carelessly about decoupling and deglobalization," arguing instead that interdependence — rather than self-sufficiency — keeps peace. Okonjo-Iweala — a dual Nigerian and U.S. national — said splitting the world into two separate economic blocs could "lead to a 5 percent decrease in real global GDP," calling that "quite a stunning number." Okonjo-Iweala said she was "cautiously optimistic" that trade ministers would reach an agreement to allow individual countries to waive intellectual property protections for Covid-19 vaccines without facing a legal challenge at the WTO. China dilemma: As China is not participating in the IP discussions, should the text explicitly bar China from being able to use waivers to make generic versions of foreign vaccines? "[China] has voluntarily opted out and we just need to find a way to capture that in the agreements," she said. "That's exactly what we're looking at with them right now." "There is life after MC12," Okonjo-Iweala said, claiming she'll be satisfied emerging from the meeting with just "one or two deliverables." Here is POLITICO's analysis of what the WTO conference will and won't achieve. Multilateral fatigue: The WTO is multilateralism via consensus, leaving it — much like the U.N. Security Council — with a veto problem. One Geneva-based trade diplomat told POLITICO: "People are going to start thinking, 'how can we organize this differently?' Or [else] the system crumbles because it's not sustainable." Is reform possible? It will be difficult. There's no comprehensive reform plan, and no agreement on even a basic first step. India and several other countries even want to rule out plurilateral, small-group decision-making and to reopen the WTO's founding agreements from 1994 to get more so-called "policy space," code for leniency in applying the global rules. India as kingmaker: Whether India decides to play along in fisheries negotiations or to renew an e-commerce duty moratorium will depend on whether other governments agree to India's proposed vaccine patent waiver. The view of grumpy Western diplomats: "They are making life hell for multilateralism. The rest of the membership is frankly fed up with that."
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