TRADE TROUBLES — The Biden administration is promising a revamped approach to its long dormant Latin American trade agenda. But even its allies remain skeptical. Biden’s diplomatic team has spent most of his first term trying to rebuild alliances in Europe and Asia stressed by former President Donald Trump’s brash nationalism. They have only recently started to turn their attention to Latin America, but lawmakers and corporate officials alike say those efforts are scant — and their patience is starting to wear thin. “I struggle to see what this administration is doing in Latin America that has any heft to it,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D. Va.) said. Kaine’s comments came during a contentious Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last month, where he and other lawmakers grilled representatives from the State and Treasury Departments on why the administration has been, in their words, ignoring Latin America. “I am so embarrassed because when I meet these heads of state,” said Committee Chair Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), “I can’t tell them that they’re wrong” when they criticize the U.S. agenda for the hemisphere. The administration says it has a plan. Last year it announced the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity — a broad forum for discussing supply chains, sustainability, anti-corruption and other economic issues. State Department Under Secretary Jose Fernandez said focusing on those issues will help U.S. trading partners more than the traditional model of trade agreements focused on cutting tariffs and expanding market access. “Tariffs [are] not what’s keeping Latin America from growing. If tariffs were all that it took, this wouldn’t be an issue,” he told lawmakers. “It’s about corruption, lack of transparency, lack of infrastructure, health frameworks that don’t work, government instability — those are the things we’re trying to look at in APEP. But critics say APEP today is little more than those initial talking points, with firms frustrated with the lack of any opportunity to file comments with the U.S. government outlining their hopes for the proposed agreement. “We filed comments with Global Affairs Canada on APEP because the administration never asked us,” Ed Brzytwa, vice president of international trade at the Consumer Technology Association, told POLITICO. There was talk of the administration formally launching negotiations in late 2022 or early 2023, but “nothing really has happened,” added Beth Hughes, vice president for trade and customs policy at the American Apparel and Footwear Association. “We hear more from, like, Costa Rica about it than we do from our own government,” Hughes said. Biden’s team says they’re working on it. Administration officials in recent weeks have held high-level briefings with House and Senate trade lawmakers, saying they will soon have updates to the Latin American trade agenda, which Kaine acknowledged in the hearing. “We’ve been told the administration is pivoting APEP to a revamped approach,” Kaine said at the hearing. “But we’ve gotten no information on the approach, no firm agreements have come out of APEP, no multilateral work on specific initiatives.” If more progress isn’t made soon, even Biden’s allies like Kaine worry about the U.S. falling further behind China in the race for economic influence in Latin America and the Caribbean, where Beijing already has more than 20 member nations for its Belt and Road Initiative. “If China’s offer is we’re not demanding reforms, just saying here is some money, here’s an investment, and our offer is [that] once we help you improve all these aspects of yourself we’re open to interaction … we will fall farther and farther behind,” Kaine said. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at gbade@politico.com or on Twitter at @GavinBade.
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