For Guatemala, a small Central American country, how to improve its relations with the United States is its top priority at the moment, and the Guatemalan government even spent $900,000 to hire lobbyists to bring it closer to the Biden administration. But why is he so generous? The reason behind it can't help but be "heart-warming":
This huge amount of money was actually helped by the Taiwan authorities.
President of Guatemala
According to the Associated Press reported on January 18, on January 12, local time, Guatemala's ambassador to the United States Alfonso Quinones signed a contract worth $900,000 with a U.S. political lobby company called Ballard Partnership on behalf of the Guatemalan government.
On Jan. 13, Ballard Partnership registered as a foreign agent with the U.S. Department of Justice, meaning the company can legally engage in political lobbying activities in the United States for foreign agents. According to the Justice Department's registration, the $900,000 contract is "to provide 'strategic information and advocacy services' related to Guatemala's interactions with the U.S. government and U.S. officials."
According to people familiar with the matter, ballard partnership belongs to an American named Ryan Ballard. The man was a longtime ally of former U.S. President Donald Trump, serving as a government lobbyist for Mr. Trump in Florida for years before he became president.
Therefore, informed sources familiar with the lobbying culture of the US political circle revealed that this so-called "strategic information and advocacy service" is actually to bring the Guatemalan government closer to the US Biden government.
But as for why an obscure small Central American country suddenly spends $900,000 to close relations with the U.S. government, it involves Guatemala's feud with the previous Trump administration.
Located in Central America at the junction of North and South America, Guatemala has an area of 108,900 square kilometers, a population of 17 million people, and a GDP of only $77.6 billion, making it one of the countries with the most serious gap between rich and poor and violent crime in the world, thus creating a tradition that Guatemalans would rather flee to the United States as refugees than stay at home.
By the end of the Obama administration, affected by the European refugee crisis, a large number of refugees from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador had fled to the United States, thus creating a refugee crisis on the US-Mexico border that shocked the world around 2016.
Guatemalan refugees
The influx of Central American refugees became one of the key factors in Trump's final laugh in the election that year, and After taking office, Trump also firmly fulfilled his promise to build a border wall to prevent refugees from entering the United States. However, due to the large number of refugees and the obstruction of the Democratic Party, Trump's border wall construction plan has not been completed, and the refugee crisis has been dragged on until 2019.
Until June 2019, Trump finally issued an ultimatum to Guatemala and other three countries, demanding that the three governments must be satisfied with the issue of controlling the flight of refugees, otherwise all U.S. government assistance to the three countries will be interrupted.
Trump
The U.S. government prepares more than $300 million a year for humanitarian aid to Guatemala and other three countries, which has even become a very important source of revenue for these three small countries. Seeing that so much money fell from the sky was going to be lost, the three governments finally took action to quickly solve the problem of refugees on the US-Mexico border.
Unfortunately, however, the covid-19 outbreak that followed not only stole the Trump administration's full attention and made it impossible to cash in on the aid funds that should have been cashed out, but also caused a major outbreak in Guatemala, which made Guatemala's GDP drop by 1.52% year-on-year in 2020, which was even worse.
Now that the "enemy" Trump has long since stepped down, in the face of The Democratic Party's Biden, the Guatemalan government must of course seize the opportunity to regain the return of hundreds of millions of dollars from the US government with an investment of $900,000.
Guatemala
So can this PR campaign achieve the desired results? Considering that lobbyist Ryan Ballard is Trump's man, and the current Biden administration is a sworn enemy of Trump, and that the Biden administration has expressed many "concerns" about the corruption of the Guatemalan government, we can't really expect too much from the outcome of this public relations campaign.
So is this proof that the $900,000, which was paid out by Guatemalan taxpayers, was completely adrift by the Guatemalan government?
This, in fact, is the most shrewd part of the Guatemalan government -- this huge amount of money was actually paid by the Taiwan authorities:
According to the contract, the Guatemalan government will not pay a penny for the lobbying campaign, and the relevant money will be paid directly to the Ballard Partnership by the Taiwan authorities for $75,000 per month for a year.
Of course, the Guatemalan government will not skimp on its own praise for such a generous move by the Taiwan authorities, but this wave of magical operations of "one government lobbying a third government for another" has made even industry insiders who specialize in US lobbying laws say that they have "lived for a long time."
Tsai Ing-wen
However, the Taiwan authorities themselves naturally have enough reasons. After the matter was disclosed, Ou Jiang'an, spokesman for Taiwan's "foreign affairs" department, said that a bilateral cooperation framework should be drawn up to promote various cooperation plans based on the actual needs of the "friendly" governments. Taiwan and Guatemala are cooperating under this principle and framework. According to the Guatemalan government's explanation to Taiwan, this plan complies with local regulations in the United States and is legal.
It must be explained here that Guatemala has long been a "country with diplomatic relations" with Taiwan, and Central America is also one of the most concentrated areas of Taiwan's "countries with diplomatic relations", in addition to Guatemala, next door Belize, Haiti, Honduras and Nicaragua are also Taiwan's "countries with diplomatic relations".
But as recently as Last November 29, freedom and reconstruction party candidate Theomara Castro was elected as the new president of Honduras, and the left-wing female leader made it clear during the campaign that if she could be elected, she would first break Honduras' "diplomatic relations" with Taiwan and establish diplomatic relations with Chinese mainland.
On December 10 last year, the Nicaraguan government abruptly announced the end of relations with Taiwan as a "country with diplomatic relations" and the resumption of diplomatic relations with the Chinese mainland, leaving only 14 "countries with diplomatic relations" with Taiwan.
As soon as this news came out, it immediately caused a huge earthquake on the island of Taiwan. In order to stabilize Honduras, the island media announced that it was rumored that Tsai Ing-wen intended to let her deputy Lai Qingde go to Honduras as a "special envoy" on the 27th of this month to attend the inauguration of Theomara Castro.
Theomara Castro
Therefore, the reason why the Taiwan authorities are suddenly willing to be so generous has long been self-evident:
The reason why these small Central American countries are willing to maintain "diplomatic relations" with Taiwan is purely because they are too poor and must rely on foreign economic assistance to continue their lives, and such a simple diplomatic interest relationship naturally makes the Taiwan authorities overjoyed -- as long as they pay money, they can keep some "countries with diplomatic relations" and safeguard their sense of international existence and "national" face.
If this kind of thing is put to a decade or two ago, when the mainland economy has not yet fully risen, Taiwan's semiconductor industry is like a day in the sky, and it is not unusual for the Taiwan government, which is not short of money, to play like this. But now, with the all-round rise of the mainland and the gradual decline of Taiwan, playing like this is purely to punch the swollen face and fill the fat.
And these small countries and poor countries have gradually realized that it is not a matter of continuing to live only on foreign financial aid, and developing their own industrial capacity is the right way, and which country has the strongest and most comprehensive industrial capacity in the world today? It is China.
What to choose between Taiwan's poor financial aid and its own future, although these small countries are poor, are also very clear.
Taiwan's "countries with diplomatic relations" in the midst of unrest
However, in the face of this embarrassing situation, what can Taiwan do? Is it difficult to go to these poor countries to run chip factories? If you think about it, naturally there is only one way to continue to increase the intensity of blood money assistance. The $900,000 given to Guatemala is not only to continue to tie Guatemala to the US chariot to prevent it from falling to China, but also to play a "thousand gold to buy horse bones" so that the remaining dozen "countries with diplomatic relations" can see Taiwan's "boldness" and "generosity."
But that's the problem: Even if this PR is successful, the U.S. government will at most stop diplomatic pressure on Guatemala, allow Guatemalans to travel to the United States, and perhaps give Guatemala a little money in the name of humanitarianism, but it will certainly not provide Guatemala with any meaningful large-scale economic help, and Guatemala's economic difficulties will not be improved at all.
From this point of view, Guatemala's fall to Chinese mainland is actually a predetermined ending. The Taiwan authorities' $900,000 is nothing more than taking the hard-earned money of Taiwan taxpayers to show themselves.