Ecuador negotiates with the United States, closes agreements with China

First modification: 20/12/2022 – 14:17

This Monday the presidents of the United States and Ecuador, Joe Biden and Guillermo Lasso, met at the White House to discuss bilateral “security and economic partnership.”

The fight against crime related to drug trafficking has resulted in hundreds of deaths and led to the declaration of a state of emergency in part of the national territory in November. For this reason, one of Ecuador’s requests was that the United States share the cost of the fight against drug trafficking. And while it maintains negotiations with this country, Ecuador claims to have closed agreements with China.

“This could be contradictory,” considers Marcos Romero, an economist and doctor in international relations from the Simón Bolívar Andean University in Quito. “It seems to me that this is related to the pragmatism that [Ecuador] He kept on the topic related to vaccines, having received massive amounts of vaccines from China and also from the United States. I also buy a lot of vaccines from both sides.”

In addition, one of the priorities of Lasso’s visit was to seek economic support to prevent crimes linked to drug traffickers who fight for control of drug trafficking in the streets, some from prisons. According to the Ecuadorian president, the United States has to pay its bill, since it is a “transnational organized crime.”

“I think it’s fair to share the bill,” the president told reporters in the port of Guayaquil, shortly before leaving for Washington. “Although it is true (that) the confrontation, the battle is taking place here, in Ecuador, the beneficiaries are not only Ecuadorian youth and children but also youth and children from the United States,” he added.

“Ecuador has undoubtedly gained importance as a drug transit center, and as a laundering space as well. Consequently, the restrictive policy that continues to prevail in the United States is to be reinforced [en] Ecuador, and under a direct alignment to the North American strategies”, maintains the Ecuadorian academic Marcos Romero.

To achieve this objective, Ecuador calculates that it needs about 5 billion dollars. However, in the statement issued by the White House there is no trace of multimillion-dollar figures for the fight against transnational organized crime: Biden promised to disburse 13.5 million dollars for microfinance loans, including companies run by women, five million against child malnutrition and another 20 million to help reduce carbon emissions.