<mediadc-video-embed data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1654801663859,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"00000165-15c6-d22c-a1ef-97efc26a0001","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1654801663859,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"00000165-15c6-d22c-a1ef-97efc26a0001","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"rawHtml":"
$bp("Brid_54801541", {"id":"27789","width":"16","height":"9","video":"1029137"}); ","_id":"00000181-49dd-d590-a5f1-cbff7b190000","_type":"2f5a8339-a89a-3738-9cd2-3ddf0c8da574"}”>Video EmbedPresident Joe Biden urged multinationals and business executives to “step up” investments in Latin America to drive economic advances in the region, suggesting this could promote democratic political gains.
Biden called on corporate executives gathered in a conference room at the Los Angeles Intercontinental Hotel to “step up and play a bigger role in driving inclusive, sustainable, equitable growth in the 21st century.”
“None of us are going to be able to fully realize change for the region on our own,” the president said, calling on companies to match U.S. commitments to the region as they did a decade ago.
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Biden, speaking at the CEO Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, an event focused on private sector investment in the Latin America region, said he was optimistic about the continent’s democratic gains.
“I find no reason why the Western Hemisphere does not develop into the most democratic region in the entire world,” Biden said.
Looming over the conference is the decision by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to forgo the summit, along with the leaders of other U.S. partners in Central America, after the president refused to invite Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
The Biden administration has faced criticism over the lack of direct government investment in countries south of the U.S. border despite arguing that the region’s success has a broad impact on the U.S. and is tied to ending the migration crisis.
Biden, who said he wanted to “update the recipe for economic growth,” touted his administration’s infrastructure spending and the need for “good-paying union jobs.”
“A lot of you don’t like my saying union,” he told the audience, but he said the benefit of organized labor protections could help remove barriers of “inequity.”
“Everybody benefits,” he said.
White House officials have argued that initiatives to increase private sector investment in Latin America are an important diplomatic tool, even as China opens its checkbook while levying none of Washington’s social-good demands.
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“Look at the practical impact of what the summit deliverables from the U.S. will mean for the hemisphere,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Air Force One Wednesday. “It is significantly more impactful on the actual lives and livelihoods of people of this region than the kinds of extractive projects that China has been invested in.”
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