Above Photo: Glitchman2/Flickr
This was an idea that the Mexican government under AMLO brought to the United States. As the article mentions there is a lack of clarity about how much of this is new money and the Trump administration has also threatened to cut funding due to migration. It remains to be seen what this pledge ends up meaning.
However, Trump’s threats to slash aid to the region if immigration was not contained have persistently raised doubts about how much the United States would stump up.
The United States will spend billions of dollars in Central America and Mexico, as part of a plan to officially strengthen economic growth in the region but also aimed at deterring immigrants who want to travel to the United States as they are forced to flee poverty and violence, the U.S. and Mexican governments said on Tuesday.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has been seeking to persuade U.S. counterpart Donald Trump to work with Mexico to develop Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, as well as Mexico’s poorer south to stem the flow of migrants and asylum-seekers.
Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said the United States is committing US$5.8 billion toward development in Central America. It is also increasing public and private investment in Mexico by US$4.8 billion via the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), US$2 billion of which would go to the south.
Speaking as the U.S. State Department issued a statement setting out the commitments, Ebrard said that the Mexican government had pledged to find US$25 billion to develop the south of the country during the next five years.
“The agreements established here mean more than doubling the foreign investment in the south of Mexico from 2019,” the minister told a news conference in Mexico City.
It was not immediately clear how much of the investment announced represented new funding. A spokesman for Ebrard told Reuters he understood that US$2.5 billion of the pledges to develop Central America were fresh commitments.
All told, the deal between the two presidents represented commitments of US$35.6 billion for Central America and southern Mexico from next year, Ebrard said on Twitter.