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Kimberly Breier

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Kimberly Breier has more than 20 years of experience in foreign policy, primarily focused on Western Hemisphere affairs. Prior to joining the firm, Ms. Breier, a non-lawyer, was Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. She also served as the Western Hemisphere Member of the Policy Planning Staff.

Ms. Breier was previously the founder and Director of the U.S.-Mexico Futures Initiative, and the Deputy Director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). She also was Vice President of a consulting firm, leading country risk assessment teams for private clients in Mexico, Argentina, and Chile.

In addition to her private sector and think tank experience, Ms. Breier served for more than a decade in the U.S. intelligence community as a political analyst and manager, primarily focused on Latin America.

From January 2005 to June 2006, Ms. Breier served at the White House in the National Security Council’s Office of Western Hemisphere Affairs, first as Director for Brazil and the Southern Cone, then as Director for Mexico and Canada, and also as an interim Director for the Andean region.

Prior to her government service, Ms. Breier was a senior fellow and director of the National Policy Association’s North American Committee—a trilateral business and labor committee with members from the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Contact: Read more about Kimberly BreierEmail

Executive Summary

In this alert, we look at Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s first months in office and the outlook for his reform agenda in 2023.  We discuss the implications for U.S.-Colombia relations and for doing business in the country.

  • Petro’s election has led to a reconfiguration of power structures in Colombia and a change in the way policies are designed and implemented. The administration has a statist bent and views the private sector’s role as less prominent than prior administrations. There is less emphasis on attracting investment.
  • This year will be crucial for Petro’s reform agenda and for his party, Pacto Histórico. The government’s energy transition policy and labor, health care, and pension reforms will shape Colombia’s economy in the decades to come and companies will need to be on notice that coming changes may be profound.
  • The Biden and Petro administrations have made efforts to find common ground. But the change of leadership in the House of Representatives, the proximity of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, an emboldened Florida GOP, and implementation of controversial reforms in Colombia could test the relationship in 2023.
  • Security remains a key concern for companies doing business in Colombia and conditions have deteriorated in the past few years. Progress on peace negotiations and the government’s new crime and drug policies will determine whether conditions improve.

Petro’s First Months in Office

“Today begins the Colombia of the possible. Today begins our second opportunity,” Petro told a cheering crowd in Bogotá on August 7. His inauguration as President of Colombia, he said, marked the end of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude for the Colombian people. The election and orderly transition to a left-wing former guerrilla president and the first Afro-Colombian vice president in the country’s history showed the strength of Colombia’s democracy, one of the oldest and most stable in the Americas.…

Continue Reading Colombia in 2023: A Crucial Year for Petro’s Reform Agenda

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Since entry into force of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (“USMCA”) in July 2020, the United States has brought two known complaints against Mexico under the Agreement’s Facility-Specific Rapid Response Labor Mechanism (“RRM”), concerning allegations that workers at two different factories in Mexico were being denied their fundamental right to organize.

The Office of the…

  •  On September 30, 2021, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador presented to Congress a constitutional reform of the electricity sector which modifies three articles of the Mexican Constitution (25, 27 and 28), reversing key parts of the 2014 energy reform that opened the sector to private investment. The congressional debate and vote on the reform are

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  • President López Obrador has been a strong critic of independent regulators, including the anti-trust (COFECE) and telecommunications (IFT) regulators.
  • COFECE is at an inflection point with a leadership transition this month while it continues to be under pressure from the López Obrador administration.
  • Eliminating or reducing the autonomy of these bodies will undermine free market

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  • The composition of the Chamber of Deputies of the new Congress will challenge President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s ability to enact constitutional changes and consolidate the agenda of his party, Morena.
  • Companies should watch the coming budget battle in Congress because of its implications for the economy overall and for tax collection.
  • Prospects for a

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