Europe will try to secure a strategic partnership with Latin America and the Caribbean under the Spanish EU presidency, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos announced before the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs on February 4.

In January, the European Commission’s head of Latin American trade relations, Gaspar Frontini, said the European Union was seeking to restart talks with Mercosur, the Latin American trade bloc, this year to finalize a free-trade agreement. Mercosur, led by Argentina and Brazil, has been engaged in talks with the EU over such a deal off and on since 1999; most recently the discussions stalled in 2001. After a hiatus, both parties are poised to resume negotiations to forge a colossal trade bloc that would leave America out in the cold.

The EU is planning to meet with Latin American and Caribbean leaders in May, when it hopes to make significant progress toward, or even conclude, agreements with Mercosur, Central America and the Andean Community.

Herbert W. Armstrong’s Plain Truth magazine forecast in May 1962, “[T]he United States is going to be left out in the cold as two gigantic trade blocs, Europe and Latin America, mesh together and begin calling the shots in world commerce.”

Now “Europe is moving rapidly to cement a number of bi-regional association agreements with Mercosur, with Central America and with Peru and Colombia that offer them a rapid transition towards free trade and an improved political and economic dialogue,” writes the Stabroek News.

These two trading blocs are beginning to mesh together exactly as the Plain Truth said they would.

Expect relations between the EU and Mercosur to continue to improve, and for the U.S. to become increasingly isolated. For more information on Latin America’s future with the EU, read “Recolonizing Latin America?”