Choosing a market-friendly banker for Ecuador’s presidency will provide a new US ally in Latin America, a region full of populist leaders whose priorities often do not align with Washington’s.
But Guillermo Lasso, who easily defeated his left-wing rival on Sunday, will also have to judge the Biden administration’s biggest rival, China. Mr Lasso, 65, is challenged to pull his country out of the worst economic crisis in a generation as a result of a Covid-19 pandemic that has killed more than 17,000 people.
“Lasso, if nothing else, is very pragmatic, and in Ecuador today this requires close relations with the United States and also with China,” said Michael Shifter, chairman of the Inter-American Dialogue, a political group in Washington. “The country is in a difficult situation, and taking sides or excluding one of the countries is not realistic.”
Ecuador is now so rife with debt to Beijing that public houses are almost empty, forcing the country to restructure its debts to private creditors and receive $ 6.5 billion in aid from the International Monetary Fund.
Under President Rafael Correa, who served until 2017 and guided his country away from the US and to China, the breadth of Beijing has built everything from dams to mines and hospitals. The debt ratio is huge – $ 18.4 billion, the third largest in Latin America and behind two much larger countries, Brazil and Venezuela, according to the Inter-American Dialogue.