U.S. President Launches New Partnership With Latin American Trading Partners

Last week in Los Angeles, the United States hosted the Ninth Summit of the Americas where leaders focused on building a “sustainable, resilient and equitable future” for the hemisphere. During the proceedings, President Joe Biden announced the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity (APEP), a new initiative that promises to drive economic recovery and growth in the region by:

• Ensuring sustainable and inclusive trade, including through better cooperation on customs facilitation, transparency and good regulatory practices, high standards on the digital economy, supporting emerging technologies, building resilience in our energy and food supply chains, and strong labor and environment standards;
• Ensuring other important supply chains are more resilient against unexpected shocks;
• Fostering innovation by increasing investments in public tax and anti-corruption measures and building infrastructure in areas like migration, education, health, unemployment and retirement, childcare, and women’s economic empowerment.
• Reinvigorating the hemisphere’s regional economic institutions, including the Inter-American Development Bank; and
• Finding new ways to address climate change.

No countries other than the United States have yet publicly agreed to participate in the initiative, but Biden administration officials hope to have a ministerial meeting of governments in early fall 2022. A senior administration official told the media that the United States’ “most like-minded economic partners” would be invited to join those talks, but that official did not name any countries in particular.

The new framework is modeled after the Biden Administration’s Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) plan, which Connecting the Dots discussed last week. Like IPEF, the APEP is not intended to lead to the negotiation of new free trade agreements and will be divided into policy “pillars” that participating governments will negotiate and join depending on their interests and ability to meet the agreement’s standards.