Speakers

• Jesús Seade, Under Secretary for North America, Ministry Foreign Affairs of Mexico
• Eric Farnsworth, Vice President, Council of the Americas

A candidate for Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Ambassador Jesús Seade Kuri offered wide-ranging comments on global trade at the 2020 Washington Conference on the Americas. He was introduced by COA's Eric Farnsworth and a video message from former Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Alec Watson.

Seade, who served as a chief negotiator for Mexico for the updated North American trade agreement that went into effect July 1, spoke of the danger to the United States, China, and other countries if the WTO is allowed to become irrelevant. He argued that the WTO should be playing an important role in educating the global public about the benefits of trade, and that the new director general must have the expertise, relationships, and negotiating skills to play the role of honest broker among countries, build trust, and coordinate efforts that lead to real results in the trade arena, including in fields such as digital trade. Seade also stressed the need for more attention to private sector interests, both in terms of encouraging multilateral companies to expand trade and opening space for small- and medium-sized enterprises to participate in global trade.

• Learn more about the Washington Conference of the Americas.

Speakers:

• Lee Buchheit, Professor, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
• Augusto de la Torre, Director, Economics Research Center, Universidad de las Américas, Ecuador
• Susan Segal, President and CEO, Americas Society/Council of the Americas (introduction)

“We may be on the cusp of a systemic sovereign debt crisis of the kind we haven’t seen since the 1980s, where you have multiple countries forced to restructure their sovereign debt simultaneously,” said Lee Buchheit at the AS/COA panel. “None of us knows when this pandemic will abate, none of us can be sure what the world economy will look like, but if the situation turns out to be as gristly as the IMF seems to think it might be, we could have 10, 15, 20, 25 countries forced into a debt restructuring more or less at the same time.” Buchheit compared and contrasted the current scenario with the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s, in the aftermath of which 27 countries globally were forced to restructure their sovereign debt.

The experts then touched on Ecuador’s debt restructuring process of 2008, "a case where a country did not pay and it could have paid,” as Augusto de la Torre described it. “Then-President Rafael Correa had run on a platform in which he said he was going to obtain significant debt relief in the country if he was elected,” said Buchheit, who added that if any financial officer had used the same moves as Correa, he or she would have ended up in prison. It was a “morally wrong outcome” said Buchheit, who also discussed so-called “odious debt” as it related to the Correa administration. Regarding other South American countries, Buchheit gave an overview of Uruguay's aggregated clause strategy of 2003 and noted that Argentina has recently revised its offer “very considerably in favor of the creditors.”

Speakers:

• Carlos Mario Giraldo, CEO, Grupo Éxito
• Erika Herrero, CEO, Belcorp
• Claudio Muruzabal, Chairman, SAP Latin America and Caribbean; President, SAP EMEA South
• Walter Pimenta, Senior Vice President, Products and Innovation, Mastercard
• Gabriela Frías, CNN en Español (moderator)

Consumers are more demanding than ever: they want their orders to arrive immediately, accurately, and efficently, said retail executives in a COA Symposium panel on how consumer behavior trends are changing. The shutdowns and quarantines have accelerated trends that originally were thought to be five years down the road, said Belcorp CEO Erika Herrero. Ecommerce is up an “astonishing” 35 percent year-over-year, said Mastercard’s Walter Pimenta, which is all the more impressive considering the travel and entertainment cateogry—which usually accounts for one-third of sales—is virtually non-existent. Grupo Éxito’s Carlos Mario Giraldo pointed out how consumers are buying more locally produced goods and “privileging the local economy because they’re sure it will have a very important impact in employment.” He also noted how consumers are visiting fewer stores these days but making higher-ticket purchases when they do. “Whoever comes to a store or comes online is serious about making a very effective purchase.” And SAP Latin America’s Claudio Muruzabal laid out three things companies can do today: Understand the consumer has changed in permanent ways and make sure you have the digital tools to serve them. Second, have a well-aligned manufacturing-to-consumer chain that can be retrofitted in days if not hours. And lastly, don’t forget your employees. “They’ll work in a different way and will define the success of your business,” he said.

Speakers:

• Sergio Amaral, Trustee at CEBRI, former Brazilian Ambassador to the United States
• Brian Winter, Editor-in-Chief, Americas Quarterly
• Cecilia Tornaghi, Managing Editor, Americas Quarterly (moderator)

"We [Brazilians] think we are Europeans, but we are Americans," said former Brazilian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergio Amaral, showing his confidence of a continued solid bilateral relationship based on values and a friendship strenghened by the affinities between Presidents Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump. In a discussion with AS/COA Vice President for Policy Brian Winter about the implications of the U.S. elections on Brasília-Washington ties, Amaral presented tough choices for Brazil, no matter the results in November. A Trump reelection could mean a difficult position for Latin American economies that would involve juggling China and the United States, which, Winter pointed out, is already a very polarized discussion in Brazil. In the case of a Joe Biden win, the Democrat's support for a bigger state role on the economy and a Green New Deal would mean "our agendas will not match," said Amaral, explaining relations would still be cordial, but countries should prepare for recurrent frictions. 

Speakers:

• Nicole Bivens Collinson, Managing Principle, Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg
• Eric Farnsworth, Vice President, Council of the Americas
• Eugene Laney, Head of International Government Affairs, DHL Express, U.S.

This DHL panel focused on how businesses can maximize the benefits of USMCA. The experts discussed trade and compliance in the context of the new North American trade deal, which went into force on July 1, and the benefits of the new pact. Panelists also covered the state of global trade, market access and customs, and digital trade, among other topics. “In the post-war environment, the United States had been the primary driver of global trade and liberalization, and now, it is the primary disruptor of the institutions and trade patterns we’ve seen since the end of World War II,” said AS/COA’s Eric Farnsworth, adding that the United States was trying to change the basic model of global trade for its own purposes. Farnsworth also spoke about how the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated changes in global supply chains. “Both at the policy and pragmatic level we’re in transition in global trade,” he said.