U.S. Treasury Nominates Neo-Con China Hater To Head Inter-American Development Bank

June 30, 2020 (EIRNS)—On June 16, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin announced he had nominated National Security Council official Mauricio Claver-Carone to become the next head of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB). The nomination of Cuban-American Claver-Carone, a fanatical regime-change neo-con in the mold of John Bolton, violates a long-standing unofficial agreement in the region that the head of the IADB would always be an Ibero-American, with an American holding the number-two post.

The Buenos Aires Times claimed on June 20 that the nomination came about because of a “lack of consensus” in the region. Both Brazil and Argentina, whose relationship is extremely tense, each put forward their own candidate. Mnuchin meanwhile gushed that naming a U.S. candidate is evidence that the Trump Administration is committed “to U.S. leadership in important regional institutions.” The IADB, a multilateral lending agency, tends to follow the World Bank’s policy orientation in lending, including attaching conditionalities to its loans.

The Argentine global online newspaper El País offered a different view on June 28 which is far more likely—that the nomination is directed against China. An increasing number of countries in the region are looking to China, rather than to the U.S., as a source of financing for infrastructure and other key projects. The article’s authors even suggest that some of the Central American nations still maintaining diplomatic ties with Taiwan may soon abandon it for the P.R.C.

Claver-Carone fits the bill perfectly as a China hater. Last January, following the November 2019 coup against Bolivian President Evo Morales, which he supported, he toured Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador, where he ranted that those three countries “have had unnatural trade relations with China and it would be good if they strengthened their ties with the United States.” It would be especially beneficial, he said at the time, if production from those countries went to the U.S. instead of to China. The U.S. seeks to foster such values as “free market, human rights and democracy,” he insisted, while “China fosters