Colombia announced it will suspend electricity sales to Ecuador and impose a 30% tariff on 20 products from its neighbor, in response to Ecuador’s decision to impose a 30% “security charge” on goods from Colombia.
Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, said his tariff is related to a trade deficit and a lack of cooperation on fighting drug trafficking. But Colombian President Gustavo Petro said cooperation was tight, adding that Colombia had seized 200 metric tons of cocaine on the two countries’ shared border. (Reuters)
The move comes as Latin American countries angle to position themselves in the aftermath of the U.S. intervention in Venezuela, as U.S. President Donald Trump threatens action against criminals in other countries in the region, building on the discourse that preceded the attack in Carcas.
Noboa is a close ally of Trump, and has led a crackdown on gangs over the past two years. Petro has a tense relationship with Trump, who said Colombia’s leader was aligned with drug traffickers, though they recently had a positive phone conversation.
Petro, usually a firebrand, has opted for diplomatic channels in this case, as business groups warn that consumers on both sides of the border will pay the costs for the tariffs, reports El País.
In fact, security cooperation between the two countries is ongoing. Some analysts believe Noboa’s move is an effort to deflect blame from his faltering efforts to control violence at home.
More Donroe Doctrine
Israel has been a dividing wedge between historic allies Colombia and the U.S. - whose presidents have been duking it out on social media for the past year. But that belies a long history of cooperation. “It might be hard to imagine that Colombia and Israel were, not too long ago, two bellicose peas in pod,” writes Belén Fernández in The Baffler.
“The combination of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s exit from power and increasing US military pressure has disrupted the criminal ecosystem in Venezuela, putting strain on Colombian guerrilla groups that have long benefitted from their ties to Chavismo and which now may retreat into Colombia,” reports InSight Crime.
Mexico is unlikely to tolerate a U.S. “boots on the ground” intervention. “It is It is far more likely that U.S. military actions—with or without the Mexican government’s acquiescence—would emphasize the destruction of fentanyl labs and/or capture-or-kill raids against the top narco bosses involved in fentanyl production,” writes Vanda Felbab-Brown for the Brookings Institution, exploring how cartels might retaliate.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping assured his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, that China would stand by Latin America’s biggest economy and the Global South, and called for both nations to maintain the role of the United Nations, reports Reuters.
Regional reactions to the U.S. intervention in Venezuela — particularly the lack of unified outcry — mark a watershed in Latin America. “For years, the chaos of Venezuela’s collapse and the resulting exodus of nearly eight million people have hung like a specter over the Latin American left,” writes Michael Reid in a New York Times op-ed. “The region’s politics have been shifting to the right, in part as a result. For millions of voters across Latin America, fear of a failed left-wing dictatorship next door has become a more potent electoral force than fear of an authoritarian right — or, for that matter, than the memory of 20th-century coups.”
Venezuela Opening for Business
Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, and her powerful brother, Jorge, had pledged to cooperate with the Trump administration before this month’s military operation to oust Nicolás Maduro, reports the Guardian.
The communications between US officials from Delcy Rodríguez, who was then Maduro’s vice-president, began in the fall and continued after Maduro rejected a demand from Trump that he leave, conveyed in a November phone call. By December Rodríguez had promised the U.S. to work with the aftermath of Maduro’s ouster.
However, the Guardian reports that while the Rodríguez siblings promised to assist the U.S. once Maduro was gone, they did not agree to actively help the U.S. to topple him.
Venezuela’s national assembly has backed a new hydrocarbons law that would open up the country’s oil sector to private companies, potentially undoing a quarter-century of state dominance, reports the Financial Times.
Reflecting U.S. demands, the proposed legislation would allow private companies to independently operate oil fields, market their own crude output and collect the cash revenues through contracts with Petróleos de Venezuela, the state-run oil company and long the cornerstone of Venezuela’s economy, reports the Associated Press.
Already the agreements brokered by Washington after Maduro’s removal have opened up the sector, and in some financial circles, there is even talk of an economic resurgence. The impact on the exchange rate has already been felt: the parallel dollar has seen a clear decline, reports El País.
At Davos on Wednesday, Trump said that Venezuela is poised to earn more from oil in the next six months than it has over the last two decades. He praised Venezuela’s new authorities for swiftly agreeing to a deal with Washington and accepting U.S. cooperation after Maduro’s removal. “The leadership is good and smart,” Trump said, referring to the interim government led by Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s former vice president and onetime oil minister. (Miami Herald)
More Venezuela
Rafael Tudares, son-in-law of Venezuelan opposition politician Edmundo González, was freed from detention Wednesday, after being held in arbitrary detention for over a year. (See yesterday’s briefs.) It’s one of the highest-profile releases yet in a slow and contested process, reports the Miami Herald.
The release comes as families of Venezuelan prisoners hold vigils outside prisons and demand the release of nearly 800 imprisoned critics, journalists and members of the opposition still detained in Venezuela, reports the Associated Press.
The United States has named Laura Dogu — who served as ambassador to Honduras and Nicaragua — as charge d’affaires to the Venezuela Affairs Unit based out of the embassy in Bogota.
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