The Latin American economy’s recession could deepen if China’s economy slows much more, says the International Monetary Fund in a new report that marks down already gloomy forecasts for the region. Brazil, Latin America’s biggest economy, is a drag on the entire...
Mercosur’s Falling Currencies Failing to Lift Exports
One benefit of a weakening currency should be exports priced to move in the global marketplace. So the slide in value of, for example, Brazil’s real should be translating into rising exports. But that’s not happening in Brazil or other key emerging markets that the...
LatAm Chemical Trade Stats Point to Savings for US Purchasers
by Brian J. McCormick, guest columnist Chemcost’s search for “the New Cheap”* winds up this month with a big opportunity story in Latin American trade. Last month we focused on Brazil (see Brazil’s In-Balance Trade Offers One Sweet Saving Opportunity). This month our...
Staying Thirsty: Trade Data Shows Rising Mexican Water Imports
Hoping to curb Mexican consumption of sugary soft drinks, President Enrique Pena Nieto has proposed a peso per liter tax on soda as part of a package of tax reforms. The public-health conscious measure follows a UN Food & Agriculture Organization report that...
Peruvian Economy Disappoints
Is this the curse of commodities export dependence at work? Peru's gross domestic product expanded 5.0% in May, lower than the expected 5.5 to 6.0% growth, the government announced last week. Barely two weeks earlier, President Ollanta Humala was remarking on Peru’s...
China Looks for LATAM Lift
“Latin America offers way out of demand doldrums: Official” – China Daily China Daily’s Santiago correspondent reports that the Chinese ambassador to Chile, Yang Wanming, sees LATAM as a global region of opportunity as weakness in the world’s mature markets persists....
LATAM at a Glance
Miami Herald scores Latin American economies on key indicators Here’s a handy reference: the figures on population, GDP, unemployment, trade, remittances, inflation, foreign direct investment, and foreign debt for each of Latin America’s national economies, courtesy...
A Model Trade Partner
US exports to Chile have soared since FTA took effect in 2004 by Bill Armbruster, blog anchor I caught Barbara Kotschwar, a Latin America specialist with the Washington-based Petersen Institute for International Economics, by surprise when I said I wanted to talk...
What Brazil Is Buying
Cotton and ethanol leap into Brazil’s top 5 imports from the US by Bill Armbruster, blog anchor China has roared past the US to become Brazil’s top trade partner, but the US is still the top exporter to the Latin American giant, and those exports – plus the US surplus...
China’s LATAM Connection
China hitches its growth to emerging market economies The recent HVAC Online story (in which Datamyne stats are cited) on the heat-driven spurt in Colombian imports of Chinese mini split ACs reminds us again just how much and how quickly China has invested itself in...