Por Agencias
redaccion@latinocc.com
A global trade war is offering Puerto Rico hope as the U.S. territory attempts to strengthen its fragile economy.
Government officials are jumping on planes to try and convince international companies to relocate their manufacturing plants to the island, where they would be exempt from tariffs.
Any relocation would be a boost to Puerto Rico’s shaky economy as the government emerges from a historic bankruptcy and continues to struggle with chronic power outages.
The island also is bracing for potentially big cuts in federal funding under the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, with federal funds currently representing more than half of Puerto Rico’s budget.
“The tariff issue is a controversial one, but for Puerto Rico, it’s a great opportunity,” said Gov. Jenniffer González.
Manufacturing remains the island’s biggest industry, representing nearly half of its gross domestic product.
But the government wants to recapture Puerto Rico’s heyday, when dozens of big-name companies, especially in the pharmaceutical sector, were based here and kept the economy humming.
So far, officials have identified between 75 to 100 companies that might consider relocating operations to Puerto Rico given the ongoing trade war, said Ella Woger Nieves, CEO of Invest Puerto Rico, a public-private partnership that promotes the island as a business and investment destination.
The companies identified work in sectors including aerospace, pharmaceuticals and medical devices.
Officials also have welcomed site selectors to Puerto Rico and organized tours to show them the island’s available infrastructure and stress how tariffs wouldn’t apply here.
“This is the moment to plant those seeds,” Woger Nieves said.
She said officials with Invest Puerto Rico and various government agencies are expected to make almost 20 more trips this year in a bid to attract more manufacturing to the island.
The government praised an executive order that Trump signed last week that aims to reduce the time it takes to approve construction of pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities in the U.S.
In the mid-1900s, needlework was one of Puerto Rico’s largest industries, employing about 7,000 workers who labored on handkerchiefs, underwear, bedspreads and other items, according to a 1934 fair competition code signed by President Theodore Roosevelt.
Manufacturing later shifted to chemicals, clothes and electronics.
Puerto Rico continues to lead U.S. exports of pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing, representing nearly 20% of total U.S. exports in 2020, according to the bureau.
In 2024, the island exported nearly $25 billion worth of goods, including $11 billion worth of vaccines and certain cultures; $7 billion worth of packaged medicaments; $1 billion worth of hormones; $984 million worth of orthopedic items; and $625 million worth of medical instruments, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity.
PERU
The people of northern Peru call him “El Obispo”.
Sometimes he is also Padre Prevost, maybe when the shock wears off, they will get used to his new title, Pope Leo XIV.
Waiters, taxi drivers, teachers and others — faithful or otherwise — saw the Rev. Robert Prevost around their communities for 20 years, eating ceviche, singing Christmas songs and partaking in everyday activities.
But he also walked through flooded streets to reach the needy and drove to remote villages to hand out blankets.
Ordained in 1982, he was sent to work in a mission in the northern part of the country, near the border with Ecuador, between 1985 and 1986.
He returned in 1988 and remained in the region until he returned to the U.S. in 1999 for a brief time.
Then he went back to Perú and was the Obispo of Chiclayo from 2015 until 2023, when he was named cardinal by Pope Francisco.
The Chicago native became a Peruvian citizen in 2015.
He would often tell Peruvians that he had “come from Chicago to Chiclayo; the only difference is a few letters.”
Many sat a few feet away from him while he delivered succinct sermons.
They can all now say they know the pope.
“He’s a very simple man,” said Alejandro Bazalar, whose feet Leo washed during a Holy Week ceremony in the city of Chiclayo, where Leo lived for nine years. “We Chiclayanos never imagined that God’s representative on Earth would live among us.”
Chiclayo, with more than 800,000 people, plays a vital role as the main commercial hub of Peru’s northern Pacific coast, with highways linking it to the Andes mountains and Amazon region.
The two-story homes near its main square are painted in shades of cream or white and the narrow streets are jammed at midday.
Low-income neighborhoods rise a few miles away.
Leo, 69 and born in the United States, arrived in the city in 2014, serving as administrator and then bishop until his predecessor, Pope Francis, summoned him to Rome in 2023.
After he was introduced to the world as Leo XIV, he introduced Chiclayo to the world.
“Greetings … to all of you, and in particular, to my beloved diocese of Chiclayo in Peru, where a faithful people have accompanied their bishop, shared their faith,” he said in Spanish, standing on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica for his first speech as the leader of the Catholic church.
Ricardo Ulloque remembered Leo singing into a microphone “I wanna wish you a merry Christmas” – the verse in José Feliciano’s bilingual song “Feliz Navidad” – accompanied by a small band during a youth gathering in 2017.
Waiter Alonso Alarcón recalled the time Leo visited a restaurant and ate ceviche, Peru’s staple dish of lemon-marinated fish.
And cab driver Hugo Pérez said he saw the pope several times driving around Chiclayo, 9 miles (14 kilometers) from the coast.
The Rev. Jorge Millán, a priest who lived with Leo and other brothers in Chiclayo, said the new pope had a “mathematical mindset, he was orderly and punctual.”
He washed his own dishes, he said, and liked to fix cars, searching YouTube for solutions when he was stumped.
The front pages of Friday’s newspapers in Peru showed the newly elected pope.
In the capital, Lima, street vendors were already selling T-shirts with photos and memes of Leo, including one that read “the pope is Peruvian.”
Leo’s time in Chiclayo was the third period he lived in Peru.
PANAMA
Former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli left the Nicaraguan embassy in Panama City where he had sought refuge more than a year ago after the courts upheld a money laundering sentence against him and headed to Colombia where he has received political asylum, the government said late Saturday.
Panama’s foreign ministry said in a statement that Colombian President Gustavo Petro sent Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino a formal note saying that he had granted Martinelli asylum and that Panama had granted the former president safe passage to Colombia.
“The Republic of Colombia is a State that has historically recognized with the utmost respect, compliance, and promotion the institutions of International Law, including the asylum system within the Inter-American system,” the statement said.
Martinelli, 73, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for money laundering in July 2023 in connection with the purchase of a publishing group.
Following the confirmation of that sentence, the former president sought refuge in the Nicaraguan diplomatic mission in Panama after President Daniel Ortega’s government granted him asylum.
He had remained inside the embassy for more than a year.
Martinelli is a businessman and supermarket magnate who governed Panama from 2009 to 2014, a period of rapid economic growth driven by the construction of major projects such as the first metro in Central America and the expansion of the interoceanic canal.
But his government was tainted by accusations of bribery and cost overruns. He was sanctioned by the United States for corruption in January 2023.
