How Washington treats Europe like a roommate and Latin America like a distant cousin—and what it would take to change the house rules
By a regulated optimist who grades in pencil, votes with both hands, and still believes maps should tell the truth.
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I. The asymmetry you can feel
An empire doesn't have to call itself an empire. Sometimes it just keeps two sets of house rules.
When Europe coughs, the U.S. shows up with casseroles and cash. When Latin America wheezes, we send compliance checklists and a sermon. The pattern isn't absolute—there are bright exceptions—but across aid, trade, visas, sanctions, and even the cultural maps in our heads, Washington's reflex is to treat Europe as a partner and Latin America as a project. That asymmetry has costs: fewer middle-class jobs on both sides of the Rio Grande, brittle democracies, and a foreign policy that trips over its own double vision.
If you want to fix it, you have to name it. And then you have to replace the house rules, not the family.
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II. Follow the money, then the footnotes
1) Aid scale vs. neighborhood neglect.
Between FY2022 and FY2024, Congress appropriated about $174.2 billion in Ukraine-related assistance. Much of that is U.S.-side spend (stockpiles, industrial base), but the order of magnitude is clear. In that same period, the entire U.S. request for foreign assistance to Latin America and the Caribbean clocks in near $2.2 billion per year. A war on the edge of Europe should get attention; the point is proportionality in the hemisphere we live in.
2) Trade carve-outs for Europe, quotas for the south.
The EU negotiated a Section 232 tariff-rate quota that lets volumes of European steel and aluminum in without the headline tariffs, while many Latin producers remain under absolute quotas or tariffs that have been tightened again in 2025. If the rule is national security, the practice looks like geopolitics with better table manners.
3) Visas: one door vs. a waiting room.
The Visa Waiver Program covers 41 countries—overwhelmingly Europe and U.S. treaty allies in the Pacific. In the Western Hemisphere, Chile is the lone Latin American member. Everyone else needs a visa interview that can take months. A continent that trades daily with us is treated like a stranger at our own door.
4) Sanctions: maximalism nearby, indulgence afar.
Decades of comprehensive sanctions on Cuba (regularly condemned at the U.N.) and a toggling regime on Venezuela—part relaxations, then re-tightening in 2025—live alongside flexible accommodations for energy and security priorities elsewhere. Even GAO has warned that Treasury needs better tracking to mitigate humanitarian side-effects in Venezuela. Sanctions can be necessary; they also need a turn-signal and a brake pedal.
5) Salience is policy.
Americans study abroad mainly in Europe—nearly half of students cluster in the UK, Italy, Spain, and France—which means voters, officials, and editors know Europe by train schedule and café menu, and know Latin America by headlines. Culture isn't a side dish; it's the menu that gets ordered from.
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III. The quiet software: "conditionality" at home, indulgence abroad
In the 1980s–1990s, the "Washington Consensus" set strict homework for Latin America—fiscal austerity, privatization, liberalization—often through IMF/World Bank programs that did stabilize some economies but also tethered politics to external benchmarks that voters never got to sign. Meanwhile, European crises from the ERM implosion to the Eurozone debt saga were treated, in Washington discourse, as shared engineering problems, not morality plays. That difference—conditionality vs. collegiality—is the operating system underneath today's double standard.
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IV. Three scenes from the same house
1) Querétaro vs. Katowice.
An American manufacturer needs electrical steel. Imports from Poland slide in under a TRQ architecture negotiated to spare allies. Imports from Brazil hit quota ceilings that Customs enforces quarter by quarter. Both countries are partners; only one got a bridge. The procurement officer learns to prefer one atlas over another.
2) San Juan vs. Seville.
A Puerto Rican student can hop to Seville on a semester abroad with institutional pipelines and reciprocal recognition. A Colombian engineer headed for a three-day site visit in Dallas waits weeks for a visa interview she may not get. That's not a security doctrine; it's an HR policy with a flag.
3) Port-au-Prince vs. Przemyśl.
When Ukraine needed air defense and macro support, Congress argued loudly and then passed money loudly. When Haiti's spiraling crisis needed multinational policing and civic reconstruction, we passed the hat and debated semantics, even as migration pressures ricocheted through Florida and Texas. (The ledger isn't close.)
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V. Why it persists (and why it's fixable)
The polite explanation is path dependence: NATO, postwar institutions, elite networks. The ruder explanation is salience: members of Congress and the national press vacation, honeymoon, and semester in Europe; few learned Bogotá's BRT or Santiago's grid up close. There is also a domestic politics loop: Latin America is framed primarily through migration and drugs, Europe through security and civilization. Different nouns produce different verbs.
The optimism: salience can be engineered. We've done it before (think Fulbright, Marshall Scholarships, Peace Corps). We can do it again, with hemispheric settings and 21st-century tools.
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VI. The Hemisphere Compact (five changes you can legislate in a year)
1) A Near-Shore Visa Waiver pilot (NVWP).
Authorize DHS/State to stand up a five-year, data-driven waiver program with Mexico, Costa Rica, Uruguay, and Panama as first candidates (all with strong overstay/return profiles and air-exit integration). Require ESTA-style pre-clearance and rapid suspension triggers. Criteria, not sentiment, should decide membership; Chile shows the model is compatible with the region.
2) A Section 232 Hemispheric Framework.
Direct USTR/Commerce to convert Latin American absolute quotas into transparent TRQs tied to decarbonization and labor standards, mirroring the EU arrangement. Condition relief on verifiable anti-dumping coordination and supply-chain emissions disclosure. Stop treating neighbors like adversaries with better weather.
3) Double Western Hemisphere development funding.
Take the $2.2 billion baseline to $4–5 billion through a bipartisan Americas window in OPIC/DFC, with 60% of deals in grid interties, clean industry, and ports that de-risk China dependence while anchoring middle-class jobs from Tijuana to Tucumán. Publish a quarterly dashboard of deals and local labor clauses.
4) Sanctions with guardrails.
Codify humanitarian channels and time-boxed reviews for broad sanctions (Cuba, Venezuela): automatic six-month check-ins on energy, remittances, medicines; mandatory GAO tracking of humanitarian impact with authority to recommend license expansions. Sanctions should be a thermostat, not a stuck switch.
5) Study South at scale.
Create a Hemispheric Fellowships line: 10,000 annual U.S. undergrads and 5,000 apprentices to Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica; reciprocal inbound placements; internships mapped to ports, planning departments, and grid operators. The Open Doors numbers tell you why: culture follows exposure, and policy follows culture.
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VII. The planning kit (for mayors and ministers who don't want to wait)
• Twin cities for supply chains. Pair Brownsville–Matamoros, San Diego–Tijuana, Laredo–Nuevo Laredo as single planning markets for permits, customs windows, and workforce pipelines. Publish ES/EN SOPs the way airports publish gate maps. • Port emissions compacts. Copy Los Angeles/Long Beach playbooks with Veracruz, Cartagena, Callao: green berth power, gate appointment systems, and drayage electrification with U.S. Export-Import financing. • Grid diplomacy, not just grid engineering. Fund cross-border HVDC ties and balancing markets that make everybody's renewables cheaper. (The money is in avoided peaker plants and drought-proofed baseload.)
No treaties needed for any of the above. Just calendars.
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VIII. Objections, answered quickly
"Security risk."
That's a screening argument, not a blanket-visa argument. The VWP's data and rapid off-ramp mechanics exist for a reason; the Caribbean Basin isn't a thought experiment, it's your supply chain.
"Steel quotas protect U.S. jobs."
So do TRQs—and they reduce bureaucratic whiplash while rewarding verifiable standards (labor, carbon). If Europe earned a bespoke lane, the hemisphere can earn one too.
"Sanctions are about values."
Yes. Which is why impact tracking and humanitarian lanes strengthen, not weaken, moral authority. GAO has already told Treasury to do more of this in Venezuela. Do it as law, not suggestion.
"Americans don't care."
They will, when internships and apprenticeships start paying, when visas stop killing deals, and when port turn times drop because both sides share software and rules. Salience is a public good you can buy on purpose.
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IX. Three vignettes from a repaired house
Nogales, 8:04 a.m.
A Sonoran tooling firm's team clears NVWP pre-screening, flies to Phoenix for a vendor qualification, and is back in three days—with a contract for aluminum housings that used to come from Shenzhen. Everyone's balance sheet gets sturdier.
Monterrey–Houston, 11:16 a.m.
A TRQ lets low-carbon slab move to a Texas mill under a verifiable standard; the mill signs a long-term contract and buys an electric arc furnace. The tariff code stops playing whack-a-mole with allies.
Miami, 6:37 p.m.
A Venezuelan grandmother picks up a remittance at a fee the family can afford because a humanitarian license settled the bank's risk model. She FaceTimes her son and shows him the receipt. Sanctions feel less like weather and more like policy.
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X. Epilogue: one atlas
The United States is a two-ocean country with a hemisphere for a backyard. Pretending our closest neighbors are a policy elective has made our supply chains longer, our borders crueler, and our diplomacy poorer. The fix is not romantic; it is administrative: visas you can predict, tariffs you can explain, sanctions you can steer, and study-abroad calendars that point south as often as east.
A republic shows what it values by who it makes room for at the counter. Let's stop making Europe a booth and Latin America a line.
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Sources (validated)
• Ukraine-related U.S. appropriations, FY2022–FY2024: Ukraine Oversight dashboard; CRS explainer.
• Latin America & Caribbean assistance levels (FY2025 request): CRS, U.S. Foreign Assistance to Latin America and the Caribbean.
• Section 232 EU TRQ; Latin absolute quotas and 2025 adjustments: USTR fact sheet (EU TRQ); CBP quota bulletins; 2025 proclamations expanding tariffs.
• Visa Waiver Program (41 countries; Chile as only Latin American member): DHS VWP overview; U.S. Embassy Chile VWP page.
• Sanctions frameworks and humanitarian tracking: OFAC Cuba and Venezuela program pages; GAO-21-239 on Venezuela sanctions impacts; UNGA annual vote condemning Cuba embargo.
• Study abroad salience: IIE/Open Doors; nearly half of U.S. students cluster in top European destinations.
• Washington Consensus background: IMF overview; Williamson framing.