Support for U.S. wanes among Latin American elites but favors EU and China - by Jim Lobe
Elites in the major countries of Latin America are increasingly bullish about their nations’ economies and increasingly alienated from the United States, according to a new survey by Zogby International, released this week by “Newsweek” magazine. The poll of 603 prominent Latin Americans—politicians, businesspeople, academics and media figures, virtually all of them with university degrees—suggests that the United States is less important than in the past and has become increasingly unpopular under President George W. Bush. Indeed, 86 percent of respondents, including 81 percent who identified their political views as being right of center, characterized Washington’s handling of relations with Latin America as being either “fair” (48 percent) or “poor” (38 percent), compared to 13 percent who called them “good” and 1 percent who said they were “excellent.”
Anti-U.S. opinion was particularly pronounced in Mexico where nearly 2 out of 3 respondents described relations with Washington as “poor.”
While 58 percent of respondents said trade agreements with the United States were either “important” (26 percent) or “extremely important” (32.5 percent) to the region’s economy, that fell well short of the 80 percent who described such ties with the EU and the 70 percent who cited trade ties with China in the same ways.
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