Latin America weighs in on Trump-Biden election

With President Biden, Europe and America would continue to drift apart.

Americans choosing between President Trump and Vice President Joseph R.

When the Biden fan told friends on social media that he was happy to be challenged on his views, he quickly found himself debating American politics not with his Florida-based relatives but with a fellow Venezuelan emigre living in Chile.

“There has never been anything remotely close in the level of attention, interest and concern … as there is with this election,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington.

Trump’s tough line, his supporters say, has forged an unexpectedly productive diplomacy with key Latin American states, leading the fight against illegal drugs and aggressively confronting leftist regimes in Venezuela and Cuba.

Biden, he served as a point man to Central America as vice president and helped shepherd through a $750 million aid package for the region in 2015.

Biden’s campaign platform calls for a $4 billion aid package to struggling Central American states as a key plank in his immigration agenda.

How a second Trump term or a Biden administration would turn out often depends on the idiosyncrasies of individual Latin American nations and leaders.

Trump — who “launched a great offensive to guarantee Brazil’s support” — install American Mauricio Claver-Carone as president of the Inter-American Development Bank, a post traditionally held by a Latin American, Mr.

Shifter said.

Although a pragmatic President Biden might be inclined to let bygones be bygones, it remains to be seen whether that would hold true for Mr.

Shifter said.

Trump, said Jose Del Tronco of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences in Mexico City.

Trump’s] positions on immigrants and ‘the wall,’ there is a kind of general expectation in Mexico that the Democrats will win the election,” said Mr.

The real challenge of a Biden administration, though, would be the expected renewed focus on human rights issues, where common ground is easier to find in theory than in practice, Mr.

Biden, he said, “[but] the real policies — the public-safety policies, such as the [new] national guard and the military presence in public spaces to fight crime — those could result in conflict.”.

Shifter said.

Biden is playing in heavy rotation in Florida commercial breaks, he said, though probably not in the way the leader of the Progressive Movement intended.

“We see that President Trump has taken positions of solidarity, and that has also generated a response of solidarity with Trump,” said Milos Alcalay, a former Venezuelan ambassador to the United Nations.

Shifter said.

“I don’t think Biden or his team have many illusions that Maduro is anything but a brutal, ruthless dictator,” Mr.

Shifter said.

“It’s not just about the U.S.-Iran, U.S.-China and U.S.-Cuba bilateral relationships,” he said, “but about the negative effect these countries have maintaining the Maduro regime in power — with all its implications.”.

A broader map, meanwhile, may also be on the mind of Cristina Fernandez, Argentina’s leftist vice president who — though nominally second in command to President Alberto Fernandez, no relation — is widely considered the driving force in Buenos Aires policy these days.

But the triumph of Evo Morales’s Movement for Socialism in Bolivia’s election this month has given Argentina’s left-leaning populist leaders new hope that the tide may be turning once again, said Mariano de Vedia of Buenos Aires’ La Nacion daily.

de Vedia said.

That a Biden administration would roll out the red carpet for the Fernandez government, though, may be little more than wishful thinking, the political commentator said.

de Vedia said.

Trump lent a helping hand in recent talks to renegotiate its sovereign debt with the International Monetary Fund, said Gustavo Cardozo of the Argentine Center for International Studies

Cardozo said

Cardozo said, and many parts of the relationship may have to be renegotiated from scratch

Biden], if elected, will stand” on this, he said, “so it would mean drawing up these deals from zero.”

Trump would be bound to continue a “chairman of the board” approach in hemispheric fora such as the Organization for American States, Inter-American Dialogue President Emeritus Peter Hakim predicted

After all, the Trump administration has “declared that the Monroe Doctrine is alive and well, thank you, after it had been really seen as obsolete by previous governments,” Mr

plays a special role — that it has a certain leadership responsibility for the hemisphere — will diminish,” he said, “[though] it will not disappear.”