Economy & Business - June 2025

Intentionally or not, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave Paraguay a massive plug during his testimony before a US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in May, advertising the country’s huge potential surplus electricity supplies from the Itaipú hydroelectric dam, that would be ideal to set up energy-intensive service providers for artificial intelligence (AI). The comment was also a stab at Brazil, which has been using that excess electricity for half a century and is in the midst of delicate negotiations with Paraguay to secure that supply in the future as well.