(I will be doing an ongoing set of posts on the President’s trip to Latin America).

Via the McClatchy Newspapers: Bush begins Latin American trip

When President Bush heads to Latin America on Thursday, he’ll find that despite the region’s much discussed “leftward tilt,” many of its populist leaders are setting ideology aside and seeking warmer ties with the United States.

That is an accurate characterization. Indeed, there is far too made of the “leftward tilt” in the region which is covered in an overly simplistic fashion in the US press. The leaders in question, while they may be on the left-side of the ideological spectrum, tend to be pragmatic and more than willing to engage in the global economy and to work with the United States.

Back to the piece:

Conservatives govern three of the five countries on Bush’s itinerary: Guatemala, Mexico and Colombia. But he’s likely to receive his warmest welcome at his first stop, in Brazil, whose president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, is a socialist former union leader who once was critical of free trade.

“There is now a demand, an expectation, from the Brazilian business community and the Brazilian policy community for more engagement with the United States,” said Paulo Sotero, the Brazil director for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a Washington research center.

Sotero said that many in Brazil thought that Lula had missed an opportunity to engage more in trade talks with the United States. “The environment in Brazil is far from hostile for President Bush,” he said.

That Lula has a leftist pedigree is certainly true. He also has a substantial pro-democracy one as well, having been jailed by the military regime for agitating for reform. Fidel Castro, Jr. he is not. Further, for all its problems, Brazil is no backwater. In raw GDP terms it is the second largest economy in the hemisphere.

A main issue with Brazil with be the tax on ethanol exports from Brazil:

Brazil is often critical of U.S. trade policies, and it resents a 54-cent-a-gallon tax on its ethanol exports to the United States.

Indeed, rescinding that tax would be in sync with the President’s call (in this year’s SOTU) to increase ethanol usage in the US and to decrease our reliance on foreign oil. Of course, the farmers in Iowa wouldn’t like that, and such a move has no chance of passing the Congress. (And, indeed, I don’t take Bush’s ethanol push all that seriously).

WaPo/Reuters directly looks at the ethanol issue: Brazil’s Lula urges Bush to cut farm subsidies

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva urged the United States on Monday to cut import duties on ethanol and slash subsidies on other farm goods to help clinch a deal in the Doha global trade talks.

“The high U.S. duties on Brazil’s ethanol make no sense. If we are going to have free trade, it should give us the opportunity to buy and sell (freely),” Lula said in his weekly radio address.

Indeed, the WaPo write-up deals with the tariff as well:

Thomas Shannon, the senior U.S. diplomat for Latin America, said on Friday that tariff cuts were a congressional issue and could not be dealt with now. Still, Lula said he would talk to Bush about U.S. ethanol tariffs, currently at $0.54 a gallon.

The Bush administration said on Monday there were no plans to cut import duties on ethanol.

“The tariff is not under negotiation and we have no intention to propose altering the tariff,” White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters.

MercoPress (in Uruguay) notes:

The US and Brazil are the world’s leading producers of ethanol, almost 70% of world production. In the US the fuel alternative is made out of corn (20 billion liters annually) and in Brazil (17 billion liters) from sugar cane.

In Brazil where a blend of ethanol in car fuels is mandatory has plans to double production in the next five years

After Brazil, bush goes on to Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and then Mexico.

Update: Andrew Leonard correctly questions Bush’s free trade bona fides.

Technorati Tags: Latin America, Bush trip, Brazil, Ethanol