Wilbur Ross on Latin America

Voice of America published an interview with U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. It's an unsurprisingly disheartening interview because it's so wooden and false.

--When asked about Argentina increasing trade with China because of Donald Trump's trade war, he says:

we are exploring all sorts of things, bilateral things, things that Argentina can sell us, and things that we can sell Argentina.

Things. That clears it all up.

--On Venezuela

Venezuela is abusing its population and that is not a satisfactory thing to happen. 

Strong words!

--And then a real, honest-to-goodness whopper.

So we are going to try to facilitate that, an example is the gesture that the United States made through Vice President Pence. I hope that people understand what it is. We are sharing the hardship with them of the refugees that have come out of Venezuela.

Holy smokes. There are about 600,000 Venezuelan refugees in Colombia alone. There is no sense in Latin America of shared hardship.