The fall of Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela

(Photo: Ernesto Arias EFE)

The Trans-Pacific trade agreement signed last week between the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim countries will be another nail in the coffin of the populist governments of Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and other countries that will be left even more isolated from the global economy — and poorer — than before.

Once ratified by the countries that signed it, the agreement — officially known as Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and heralded as the biggest trade deal in history — is expected to cover 40 percent of the world economy. It’s likely to be a major boost to trade and investments among the United States, Japan, Australia, Singapore, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Chile and the remaining Pacific Basin signatory countries.

But what has gone almost unnoticed is that it will further isolate the struggling economies of Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and other countries on Latin America’s Atlantic coast, whose disastrous populist governments have refused to enter free trade deals with the world’s biggest economies.

And what’s even sadder, this is not even a major topic of discussion in Brazil, Argentina or Venezuela, whose leaders live in an ideological bubble, oblivious to the fact that the commodity price boom their countries benefitted from in recent years was a stroke of luck that is not likely to be repeated anytime soon.

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