President Joe Biden met Monday with his Ecuadoran counterpart Guillermo Lasso at the White House where they discussed security and economic cooperation between Washington and Quito, which is calling for cost-sharing in the fight against drug-trafficking.
Lasso arrived with a list of priorities including help for a critical issue that is bleeding the South American country dry: battling the cartels that have waged open warfare in Ecuador’s streets and prisons.
The unrest has resulted in hundreds of deaths and led Lasso’s government to declare a state of emergency in parts of the country that is locked between the world’s two largest cocaine producers, Colombia and Peru.
“I think it’s fair to share the bill,” Lasso told reporters in Ecuador Sunday shortly before flying to Washington.
“The battle is being fought here,” he added. But “the beneficiaries (of US help) are not only Ecuadorian youth and children but also youth and children in the United States.”
To win this battle Ecuador estimates it needs $5 billion, and the White House signalled last week it would examine how to increase security cooperation to combat cartel and gang violence.
“Today we’re going to keep building on the progress we’ve made,” Biden told Lasso in the Oval Office Monday ahead of closed-door talks.
“Together, we’ve made historic strides on migration. And this afternoon, we’ll discuss how we can deepen our security and our economic partnership even further than it is right now.”
Biden said such cooperation would include “our new joint investment programs that address security needs for Ecuador’s prison system” as well as its justice sector and maritime security.
Lasso, Ecuador’s first conservative president in 14 years, described the face-to-face meeting as an opportunity to “reaffirm the democratic freedom and human rights values that we share” with the American people.
Trade is also a topic of discussion, and the leaders were set to discuss regional economic initiatives, including the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity, aimed at mobilizing investment, promoting clean energy and strengthening supply chains.
On Sunday Lasso noted that Ecuador was one of the few American nations without a free trade agreement with the United States, and said reaching such an accord would “avoid migratory flows by creating jobs” in Ecuador.
Like other Latin American countries, Ecuador seeks to avoid the global rivalry between the United States and China by remaining on good terms with Washington while benefiting from Beijing’s open wallet.
Lasso seeks to conclude a free-trade pact with China after nearly 10 months of negotiations.
Stemming large-scale migration is a priority for Biden. On the US border with Mexico, authorities have intercepted more than two million migrants since October 2021, according to official US figures.
Ecuadorans constitute a tiny share of the migrants. Still, their numbers have grown sharply this year, from 600 in January to 5,000 in September, according to official data.