President Obama’s Latin agenda takes shape

This is how President Barack Obama’s trip to Latin America, which is scheduled to begin Friday, is shaping up:

• BRAZIL — Here the emphasis is expected to be on business and forging a relationship for the future.

U.S. officials say Obama will stress Brazil’s growing role in the world economy. Not only is Brazil expected to be the world’s fifth largest economy by 2016, the year Rio hosts the Olympic Games, but there have been recent, massive discoveries of deep-water oil reserves. Infrastructure projects leading up to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil also are expected to create opportunities for U.S. business.

“It will be a recognition that we look at Brazil very differently from the way we looked at Brazil 10 years ago. He will recognize the evolving nature of the relationship with Brazil,” one U.S. official said.

On Saturday, the president will meet with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff in the morning and later attend a state lunch at the Foreign Ministry.

He also is expected to be the keynote speaker at a U.S.-Brazil Business Summit in Brasilia attended by some 300 top executives from some of the largest corporations in Brazil and the United States.

The event, organized by the Brazil-U.S. Business Council, will explore business opportunities in the energy and infrastructure industries and coincides with a business mission to Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.

During the stop in Rio Sunday, Energy Secretary Steven Chu is expected to accompany the mission and Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke is scheduled to be on the visit to Sao Paulo the next day.

Next Sunday the president will be in Rio de Janeiro where he is expected to visit Corcovado, the peak where the landmark statue of Christ the Redeemer towers over the city, and a favela – one of the many makeshift settlements that sprawl across the hills of Rio. The military and police have recently been engaged in a pacification program to retake the favelas from drug gangs and other criminals.

Obama is expected to devote part of the day to family time but it is possible he will make a major address in Rio.

• CHILE — In this copper-rich and agriculturally diverse country — the second stop on this trip, Obama is expected to deliver a regional speech on March 21.

U.S. officials describe it as “an amplification” of the speech the president gave at the 2009 Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago where he asked for a new start between the United States and nations of the region.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Alejandro Wolff, the U.S. Ambassador to Chile, said the United States and Chile were working on a nuclear energy accord in advance of the Obama visit. Such an agreement might cover preparing and training people to potentially work in the nuclear industry. Chile doesn’t currently have any nuclear plants and its possible nuclear future is a topic of hot debate in the country.

Obama also is expected to ask Chile to adopt a more visible role in Latin America, both as an economic role model and as a defender of democracy and human rights. Chile has been coy about that in the past, in part because it depends heavily on trade with its neighbors and doesn’t want to antagonize them.

• EL SALVADOR — The Salvadorans are encouraged that the president will be spending the night in their country and he will be welcomed at an official dinner on March 22. George W. Bush was the last U.S. president to visit and he only stayed several hours.

Unlike Chile and Brazil, El Salvador is in need of concrete support. “El Salvador faces the big problems,’’ said Peter Hakim, president emeritus of the Inter-American Dialogue. “They want and need and expect some help.’’

The top priority will be the regional security issue and working on joint solutions to the problems of drug trafficking, gangs and organized crime, said Francisco Altschul, Salvadoran ambassador to the United States,.

“President Funes has insisted that regional security shouldn’t just be regarded as a matter of policing but also has to include elements of social policy such as addressing poverty and inequality,’’ said Altschul.

Other key areas the Salvadorans want to discuss are: climate change and its impact on a country that has been plagued by violent weather and landslides, biofuels, poverty in the context that economic stimulus might prevent Salvadorans from turning to crime and leaving for the United States, how to tweak the U.S.-DR-Central American Free Trade Act to make it more available to small and medium-sized businesses, and immigration..

There are 2 million Salvadorans living in the United States and 200,000 of them are on temporary protected status, which was extended after a 2001 earthquake. TPS has been renewed seven times since then and each time the Salvadorans pay fees, which have added up to $4 million over the years. The government would like to see a more permanent solution on their status.