Office of International Affairs

Office of the Western Hemisphere

< BACK

The Office of the Western Hemisphere at the U.S. Treasury Department covers 34 countries in the region, ranging from Canada to Chile. The Office consists of a Director, Deputy Director, six country economists, a financial attaché in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and a secretary. The Office reports to the Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Western Hemisphere.
The work of the Office is focused on supporting the policy priorities of the Under Secretary for International Affairs.  In particular, engagement with the countries of the Western Hemisphere is focused on responding to the changing international economic landscape and supporting economic liberalization and development in Latin America and the Caribbean.  This involves ongoing analysis of the potential risks and vulnerabilities in the region, promoting policies that sustain growth, supporting efforts to translate this growth into poverty reduction, and cooperating with partner governments on wider opportunities to help reverse the spread of political instability, drug trafficking, money laundering and terrorist finance. The Office works closely with other parts of the U.S. government (e.g., National Security Council, Department of State, United States Agency for International Development, Department of Commerce, United States Trade Representative, and Millennium Challenge Corporation), finance and central bank officials of governments of the region, and the staff of the international financial institutions (IMF, World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank) to advance coordinated strategies for achieving these objectives. Representative priorities and areas of work include:

• Maintaining an active dialogue with regional finance officials to promote sound macroeconomic and financial policies and understand regional economic and financial vulnerabilities, including oil, commodity, and food price shocks.
• Promoting infrastructure development in the hemisphere through the Infrastructure Development Program of the Americas, a program co-sponsored by the International Finance Corporation and other donors that supports technical assistance and feasibility studies for regional infrastructure projects.
• Implementing the U.S. government’s Small Business Finance Initiative to expand credit to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the hemisphere through technical assistance and direct lending to SMEs. This initiative expands on the 2004 Summit of the Americas commitment to triple lending to small businesses.
• Providing support for trade liberalization and capacity building in the context of recently-signed U.S. trade agreements (Chile, CAFTA-DR, NAFTA, and Peru).
• Promoting pro-growth microeconomic reforms – such as legal and regulatory reforms, financial sector reforms, and labor market reforms – throughout the region to raise productivity growth and improve the business climate.
• Working bilaterally and through the International Financial Institutions to strengthen macroeconomic policies and target assistance for operations to reduce poverty, stimulate growth, and create opportunity for a vibrant private sector.

Last Updated: June 11, 2008