On May 14, after meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, Colombian President Gustavo Petro signed the Memorandum of Understanding by which Colombia joins China’s global infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative. Two days later, before leaving China to return to Colombia today, Petro met with New Development Bank President Dilma Rousseff and her team, and announced afterwards that his government has submitted an application to join the NDB.
Petro posted that the project which most interested the NDB team was Colombia’s proposal to build a “120 km rail or canal connection between the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean … linking the Gulf of Urabá with Cupica in Chocó. It could link all of Atlantic South America, to improve its transportation costs, with Asia. A global project that would make Colombia even more the heart of the world.”
These steps by the country which the United States has (ab)used in recent decades as its most reliable client-state in the region, provoked a fit in Washington, D.C. The State Department’s Western Hemisphere Affairs Bureau rushed to threaten that the Trump administration will use its power at the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) and other Western-dominated international financial institutions (the World Bank and IMF) to cut off any loans, even disbursement of already-approved loans, for any Colombian project in which a Chinese company is involved. “These projects endanger the region’s safety and security. American tax dollars SHOULD NOT be used in any way by international organizations to subsidize Chinese companies in our hemisphere,” the Bureau posted May 15. Everyone knows the threat specifically refers to IADB and World Bank financing for the first phase of Bogotá’s metro project.
Ever-so-subtly, the Bureau followed up with a post referencing the months-old news that “the United States welcomes Panama’s recent official withdrawal from the Belt and Road Initiative.”
Petro told reporters before leaving Beijing this morning that his government is not looking for a fight with the United States, but for economic relations with the whole world. “We can talk on an equal footing with the United States,” and now we have done the same with China, he said. “We are going to talk with India, with Japan; we have opened many diplomatic relations with Africa that did not exist before.” We have a good relationship with Europe, the Arab world, “practically everyone…. Unfortunately, (our country) has been blinded in the world by looking exclusively at Miami, and that is very harmful.”
The Office of the Presidency described Colombia’s decision to join the NDB as “a strategic step towards diversifying international financing sources and consolidating partnerships with emerging economies. The NDB will represent for the country a concrete alternative to traditional financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank…. This positions the country as a relevant actor within a financial architecture where the economies of the global south are seeking greater autonomy and equity in decision-making.” By thus associating with the BRICS, Colombia can access increased trade, foreign direct investment and technology transfer, it added.
