LatinNews Daily - 24 July 2018

Development: On 23 July a Honduran judge ordered 19 people to be imprisoned on a preventative basis, including three national legislators, an alternate legislator, and a deputy minister, while they await trial for corruption charges.... Read More

Development: On 23 July Peru’s national congress voted overwhelmingly in favour of declaring a state of emergency in the national magistrates’ council (CNM) for a period of nine months.... Read More

Ecuador: Ecuador’s foreign trade minister, Pablo Campana Sáenz, has announced Ecuador’s intention of joining the Pacific Alliance trade bloc (comprising Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru) as an associate state.... Read More

Development: On 23 July the NGO Global Witness published data showing that 57 land activists were murdered in Brazil in 2017.... Read More

* Brazil’s national industrial confederation (CNI), a private sector lobby, has sent a letter to the foreign ministry (Itamaraty) asking the federal government to seek closer commercial ties between the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) regional trade bloc and the rival Pacific Alliance regional trade bloc.... Read More

Central America: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has revised down its 2018 economic growth forecast for Central America and the Dominican Republic to 3.3%, down from 4.3% in April.... Read More

Development: On 23 July Mexico’s President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced in a press conference seven priority projects, worth approximately US$26bn, that will be undertaken by his incoming government and are to be funded from the savings obtained principally through López Obrador’s proposed ‘republican austerity’ government plan.... Read More

* Jesús Seade, who has been appointed by Mexico’s President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador as his future government’s chief negotiator of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), has confirmed that he has been invited to attend the next Nafta renegotiation round between Mexico, Canada, and the US, scheduled to start in Washington DC on 26 July.... Read More

Development: On 23 July senators from the Frente para la Victoria (FPV, Kirchneristas) hard-line faction of Argentina’s main opposition Partido Justicialista (PJ, Peronists) described as “illegal” the armed forces reform plans announced by President Mauricio Macri that would allow the armed forces to assume some internal security duties.... Read More

Argentina: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has revised down its growth projections for Argentina in 2018 from the 2% forecast in April to just 0.4% with the economy predicted to contract in the second and third quarters of 2018.... Read More