However, the economic illiteracy that keeps getting piled on in these articles needs to be addressed; it's extremely irritating. I mean, if you don't know economics, you should keep to the politics. Bloggers who dive into economics and are so obviously ignorant of it don't do anything for their case. This guy saying that Colombia allies itself with the US because of its embrace of energy and mining is ignoring the equally enthusiastic pursuit of same over in Venezuela. Everyone has to have something to sell if they're going to put food in their mouths. This person needs to stick to politics, because his ignorance of economics is extremely grating.
The US's interest lies in promoting free trade, and specifically with the TPP, in circumscribing China as a bonus, not in getting its hands on energy resources, or mines. This reverses the actual relationship between commodity producers and advanced economies.
Venezuela doesn't have to sell its oil. We come and get it, and they willingly sell it to us. We don't need a free trade agreement for that.
Same with Saudi Arabia or any other place that has raw materials. They don't sell them; advanced economies come and get them because they need them for their industries.
US foreign policy is geared towards free trade because we actually have to sell our stuff to get someone to buy it. Our cars have to compete with Japan's, our tractors with China's, our lathes with Germany's.
Free trade benefits the US because we need it to sell our stuff. Venezuela wouldn't benefit from a free trade agreement because they don't need one to sell their oil, and all it would do is swamp whatever domestic producers of stuff like lathes they have, in most cases. I'm speaking here in the abstract of course; for all I know Venezuela has producers of lathes that can compete with US producers. In general, though, US products will be somewhat superior to stuff made in Venezuela, or they won't make anything that competes with the stuff the US makes.
As a bonus, if an advanced economy can get a free trade agreement with a less advanced economy, it pretty much guarantees that place will never compete with them industrially, as it would be very hard for a local producer to get a foot in the door if his country can't set a tariff on goods coming from advanced countries that could outsell him any day of the week and twice on Sunday. That's the actual economic mechanism of imperialism. It's why Boston was the heart of the American Revolution; it was the most advanced economy in the colonies at that time. British policy was geared towards enforcing free trade with the colonies, and Boston's upper classes understood that if that continued they would never be able to compete locally against British goods.
Raw materials don't figure unless some country gets it into its head to try to keep an advanced country from actually accessing them; then all bets are off, of course. But that's not the principal aim of US foreign policy.
I don't know why places like Peru sign free trade agreements with the US; it's pretty stupid as a relatively small and less advanced country doesn't have anything to gain from it. Canada and the US having a free trade agreement makes sense; Mexico and the US having one doesn't.
But these small and otherwise less advanced places do, and I'm sure a lot of it has to do with all the levers that the US can pull to pressure them into it. Once done, they condemn their equivalents of Boston to enduring second class status vs the US's cities.
Which is one reason why the US pursues them. It has nothing to do with getting energy or copper or something like that. We'd get that stuff anyway; Mexican oil isn't why NAFTA was pursued, and as I pointed out above, Venezuelan oil will flow to the US regardless of pretty much anything. The two countries barely recognize each other's existence at this point, but that isn't going to stop that oil from flowing. Nothing will short of actual war.
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