Trump Hits Wall With Bid to Place Ally at Latin America Bank
Trump Hits Wall With Bid to Place Ally at Latin America Bank
(Bloomberg) -- U.S. President Donald Trump’s controversial push to install a close ally at the helm of a key Latin American development bank is running into difficulty after Mexico, Chile and the European Union called for delaying the election.
Mexico’s finance ministry announced Friday its support for a postponement of the vote on the next president of the Inter-American Development Bank, expected a month from now, saying the issue requires more dialog to decide the role for the institution amid the global pandemic. The move comes after the EU and then Chile in recent days said that they support a delay.
Postponing the election would be a setback for Trump, who in June launched his senior adviser for Latin American issues, Mauricio Claver-Carone, to head the Washington-based institution. While Claver-Carone portrays himself as a breath of fresh air for an organization that has had just four chiefs in six decades, his eventual presidency would also mean breaking a non-written tradition where a Latin American presides this bank.
The move triggered criticism from politicians and former diplomats in the region including Brazil’s Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Colombia’s Juan Manuel Santos, who in June penned a letter calling for country members to reject the U.S. nomination.
Mexico’s statement on Twitter didn’t mention the U.S. candidate specifically and cited the inability of governors of the IDB, as the institution is known, to meet in person; their March annual meeting was postponed due to the coronavirus. While the U.S. is the biggest shareholder with a 30% stake and has a de facto veto based on a 75% quorum requirements, the winner needs support from more than half of the region’s 28 member countries.
Denying Quorum
Mexico, the E.U. nations and Chile have a combined vote share of about 20%, meaning that they would need the addition of nations representing 5% of the vote to deny quorum for a vote on Claver-Carone in mid-September. Argentina, with an 11% vote, agrees with Mexico and Chile’s delaying stance, according to a government official who requested anonymity because President Alberto Fernandez’s administration hasn’t publicly commented on the issue.
The group is likely to try to build at least 50% support for a postponement to show they are standing for more than just denying a quorum, said Roberta Jacobson, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for the Americas.
“My guess is many would find postponement an elegant solution, and therefore that 50% is quite feasible,” said Jacobson. She is advising Trump opponent Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, and wrote last month in Americas Quarterly magazine that having a U.S. head would undermine the IDB’s efforts to confront the pandemic crisis.
Colombia and Brazil expressed support for Claver-Carone’s candidacy after it was announced in June, as did Ecuador, Paraguay, Honduras, Uruguay, El Salvador, Panama and Jamaica. Together with the U.S., those nations represent about 49% of the bank’s voting shares.
Venezuela has an additional 3.4% vote at the bank. Opposition leader Juan Guaido, whose representative was recognized last year after Guaido called President Nicolas Maduro’s appointees invalid, also has expressed support for Claver-Carone.
The coronavirus pandemic has boosted the importance of the bank, as it plans to lend billions of dollars to help Latin American nations recover.
Claver-Carone’s election would place a Trump ally at the top of the IDB for the next half decade, even if Trump loses his re-election bid to Biden in November. The U.S. seized the opportunity after Latin America’s three largest economies failed to agree on a candidate. While Argentina secured the support of Mexico for Gustavo Beliz, an adviser to President Alberto Fernandez, Brazil initially planned to present its own candidate.
Mexico’s decision comes one month after President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador traveled to Washington to see Trump for a visit, officially to celebrate the start of a new North American free trade agreement, that was widely criticized in Mexico after Trump spent part of his 2016 campaign and part of his time in office verbally attacking the nation and its people.
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