"That's not surprising since the European economies keep growing, while the United States is slowing down," says Isaac Cohen, president of US-based consultancy Inverway and a former director of the Washington office of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL).
EU trade with Latinamerica grew by 11.5% in 2007 to record of 160 billion euros equivalent to 245 billion US dollars. EU exports to Latin America reached 71.4 billion euros, up 12.8%, while EU imports from Latinamerica grew by 10.5% to 88.6 billion euros.
That means Latinamerica trade with the EU is growing nearly twice as much as its trade with the United States, which only grew by 6.2% last year.
EU also continues to have a much smaller trade deficit with Latinamerica than the United States: last year it reached 17.3 billion euros (US$ 26.5 billion), up 1.7% from 2006. By comparison, the US deficit reached US$ 100.5 billion. However, the EU still lags the US in terms of total trade with Latin America.
Last year's EU trade with the region was less than half of U.S.-Latin America trade.
Mercopress