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"An unprecedented week of chaos in U.S.-Latin America policy."

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Russ Roberts (https://trendsingeopolitics.blogspot.com).

 

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February 3, 2025

Hello, everyone. Today at WPR, we’re covering the dramatic shift in U.S. policy toward Latin America seen over the past week and how subnational actors could take the lead in climate action.

But first, here’s our take on today’s top story:

A USAID flag near its headquarters in Washington, March 6, 2021 (Sipa photo by Graeme Sloan via AP Images).

United States: Elon Musk said that President Donald Trump had signed off on shutting down the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, after a standoff over the weekend between officials from the agency and the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which Musk leads. Employees of USAID were told that the headquarters would be closed today and its webpage and social media accounts have gone dark. (Washington Post)

Our Take: The standoff this weekend—in which two USAID security officials were placed on leave after attempting to block DOGE officials from accessing classified materials—marks an escalation of the Trump administration’s attempts to tighten control on the agency’s operations. After freezing...

	Subscribe to WPR to read our take on today’s top story.

In terms of U.S. policy towards Latin America, last week was one of those “weeks where decades happen.” While the apocryphal quote often misattributed to former Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin is overused, it’s fair to say that, prior to last week, no week since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has shifted U.S. foreign policy in the region so dramatically.

The movement and chaos that defined last week’s policy swings indicate that Latin America will face significant challenges over the coming four years from its northern neighbor, columnist James Bosworth writes.

U.S.-Latin America Policy Just Saw an Unprecedented Week of Chaos By James Bosworth No single week in the past two decades has shifted U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America so dramatically.

*****

As anticipated, U.S. President Donald Trump officially withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change as one of his first official acts upon taking office on Jan. 20. The move mirrors what Trump did in 2017, but unlike then, advocates for climate policy now have a ready-made blueprint for action.

Within six months of Trump’s initial withdrawal from the Paris Agreement in 2017, states, cities, businesses and communities across the U.S. rose to the challenge: A coalition of over 2,700 leaders from all these levels of government and civil society launched the We Are Still In campaign, pledging to uphold the goals of the Paris Agreement and proving that leadership on climate action can come from the ground up.

That same spirit of collective action is needed again, this time on a global scale and in the face of mounting global crises—and amid a changed landscape of global power dynamics, Heela Rasool-Ayub writes.

With the U.S. Stepping Down, New Climate Leaders Are Trying to Step Up By Heela Rasool-Ayub With the U.S. retreating from climate action, subnational actors can take the lead in reshaping global climate governance. They just need some help.

Question of the Day: In October 2018, Canada became the second country in the world to fully legalize and regulate its recreational cannabis supply chain. What was the first country to do so?

Thailand Germany Mexico Uruguay

Find the answer in the latest WPR Weekly Quiz, then read Benoît Gomis’s briefing on the security and drug policy legacy of outgoing Canadian PM Justin Trudeau.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said earlier today she had struck a deal with the Trump administration to delay the implementation of a 25 percent blanket tariff on Mexican imports into the United States. As part of the deal, Mexico will deploy 10,000 troops to address the flow of migrants and illegal drugs across the U.S. border.

Meanwhile, the other tariffs announced by Trump on Saturday—25 percent on Canada and 10 percent on China—are still set to go into effect. Canada announced retaliatory tariffs in response and China said it would file a case against the U.S. at the World Trade Organization.

Read more on the damage that Trump’s tariff policies could do in a briefing by Andrew Gawthorpe, as well as the limitations of Trump’s approach to the U.S.-China trade war specifically in a column by Mary Gallagher:

Even Scaled Down, Trump’s Tariffs Will Do a Lot of Damage By Andrew Gawthorpe Nov. 27, 2024 | Trump’s tariffs will likely be less extreme than he has threatened. That would still leave the U.S. and the world worse off. Trump Has Lost the Plot on the U.S.-China Trade War By Mary Gallagher Jan. 7, 2025 | Victory in the U.S.-China trade war will go to the side that is best at persuading other countries that its version of globalization is the most attractive.

*****

U.S. President Donald Trump said in a social media post yesterday that he will cut off all U.S. aid to South Africa in response to a land expropriation law that recently passed in the country. He said, without evidence, that South Africa “is confiscating land, and treating certain classes of people VERY BADLY,” referring to white South Africans.

Land reform and expropriation has been long debated in South Africa as an attempt to redress colonial and apartheid-era land seizures by white South Africans. Read more on the debate, and the complicated politics around it, in this Q&A with John Campbell from 2018:

Can Land Expropriation Address South Africa’s Continued Racial Disparities? By The Editors March 27, 2018 | John Campbell discusses racial disparities in land ownership in South Africa and why land reform remains so contentious despite the end of apartheid.

*****

An explosion at a residential complex in Moscow today killed Armen Sargsyan, who runs a volunteer paramilitary unit fighting alongside Russia and who Ukraine’s intelligence services have previously accused of orchestrating assassinations in Kyiv. The explosion appears to be the latest assassination by Kyiv or pro-Ukrainian operatives, underscoring the growing shadow war being fought outside the Ukrainian theater. Read more in this edition of the Daily Review from December.

More from WPR

Paul Poast on Trump and U.S. hegemony. Yasir Zaidan on the RSF’s targeting of Christians in Sudan. Richard Gowan on Trump, the U.N. and China. Francisco Serrano on anti-immigrant fearmongering in Portugal.

Read all of our latest coverage here.

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