Latin View

TOKYO — While visiting Japan and interviewing officials on the robotics revolution that is sweeping much of Asia, it became clearer than ever to me that President Donald Trump’s plans to bring back low-skilled manufacturing jobs to America are a political illusion.

The Trump administration’s highly unusual step of boycotting several sessions of the highly respected Inter-American Human Rights Commission (IAHRC) was a bad mistake that will weaken US efforts to condemn Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador and other systematic human rights abusers.

What happened last week at a meeting of Latin American nations with China and other Asian countries in the Chilean city of Vina del Mar is a prime example of how President Donald Trump’s isolationism will diminish US influence in world affairs.

A new report on President Trump’s proposed $21.6 billion wall on the border with Mexico is the clearest evidence I have seen so far that Trump’s obsession with undocumented Mexican immigrants is based on false data, and is aimed at stirring up racial panic for political gain.

If Ecuador’s opposition candidate Guillermo Lasso wins the April 2 runoff election and becomes his country’s next president, most Ecuadoreans will soon realize that outgoing President Rafael Correa’s alleged “economic miracle” of the past 10 years was a monumental sham.

Many Venezuelan opposition leaders and exiles are hopeful that President Trump will take a tough line on Venezuela, and help restore democracy in that country.

The biggest bribery scandal in Latin America’s recent memory — the Odebrecht construction giant’s nearly $800 million in illegal payments to government officials in Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela and several other countries — should become a turning point in the region’s fight against corruption.

It’s no wonder that Bolivian President Evo Morales is mockingly referred to as “Ego” Morales by his critics: He has just built a $7.1 million museum to glorify his life story.

A new report from Freedom House on political liberties around the world ranks the United States pretty high on the list, but if President Donald Trump continues on his present course, we are likely to see the country falling far behind the world’s freest countries next year.

After a canceled meeting followed by a phone call with President Trump, Mexican leader Enrique Pena Nieto should send the new president a gift: two new studies that show the U.S.

A little-noticed paragraph in the recent US intelligence community report about Russia’s hacking of the US elections makes me wonder whether Moscow’s next step will be to conduct cyber-espionage campaigns to help elect authoritarian populist leaders in Germany and France’s elections this year, and in Mexico’s 2018 elections.

The results of the new international PISA tests of 15-year-old students should be ringing alarm bells throughout Latin America: they show that 63 per cent of Latin American students lack basic skills in math, and in some countries that figure is as high as 91 per cent.

President-elect Donald Trump’s election is a major blow to globalization, and will probably lead to a period of US nationalist populism.

If Hillary Clinton wins the November 8 elections, it will be because most Americans decided that it’s better to have a president who mishandles her emails than one whose mercurial personality would make it dangerous to put him in charge of the nuclear button.

Now that Venezuela’s autocrat Nicolás Maduro has broken the rule of law and closed all avenues to a peaceful resolution of his country’s crisis, there is only one way to prevent a possible bloodbath: an international diplomatic offensive to restore democracy in Venezuela.

For the first time ever, the Organization of American States (OAS) will monitor the upcoming US presidential elections, putting the United States in the same league as Haiti and other politically volatile Latin American countries.

Here’s what’s most troubling about the prominent Republicans who have deserted Donald Trump because of the video in which he made revolting remarks about women: Many of those same people stood by him for more than a year while he made almost daily statements demeaning Hispanics, as if that were OK.

Following the surprise results of Colombia’s peace referendum and Britain’s Brexit vote — in which most polls turned out to be wrong — one has to ask whether something similar could happen in the US elections.

Of all the reasons for concern about a potential Donald Trump administration’s foreign policy, one of the most troublesome — aside from Trump’s impulsive personality — would be the conflicts of interest posed by his investments abroad, and by his debts to foreign banks.

CARTAGENA, Colombia — During an interview with President Juan Manuel Santos in Colombia to discuss the Oct.