After decades of ignoring South America, under President Donald Trump the United States has turned its attention toward it with a vengeance. Trump had already shown a greater interest in the continent with a $20 billion lifeline to Argentina’s pro-market president Javier Milei, and tried to punish Brazil with tariffs for prosecuting its former president, Jair Bolsonaro. Venezuela is obviously a major escalation. Given the continent’s vast natural resources, its 440 million people living close to the U.S., and the growing influence of China, Americans have a great stake in how Trump’s Latin gambit plays out.
South Americans long complained that the United States did not pay enough attention to the region. And in fact it has not, perhaps because economically South America has been consistently disappointing. While China has grown to the second largest economy in the world, and India today is the fastest-growing major economy, South America essentially stopped catching up to the United States in per capita income four decades ago, after its disastrous 1980s debt crisis.
