Key Takeaways
- Secretary of State Marco Rubio publicly backed Bolivia's $1.9 billion IMF financing program, just days after Bolivia's Congress approved it on September 18.
- President Rodrigo Paz pushed for wider U.S. market access for Bolivian goods, a market that took in $287 million in Bolivian exports between January and July of this year.
- The two delegations also discussed cooperation on the El Niño weather pattern, counternarcotics support, and a pending Bolivian investment law that could unlock U.S. capital in artificial intelligence, energy and mining.
A brand-new deal gets its first public nod from Washington
Rodrigo Paz walked into a New York hotel on Monday carrying a short, specific list for Secretary of State Marco Rubio: broader access to the U.S. market for Bolivian products, support for the credit line Bolivia just signed with the International Monetary Fund, and backing to strengthen the police and armed forces against drug trafficking. The sit-down opened Paz's schedule at the 81st session of the UN General Assembly.
The stakes are practical, not symbolic. How this relationship develops could shape how much financing, investment and political room Paz has to keep pushing an austerity program that has already triggered transport blockades back home.
Two days after Congress signed off
The Washington meeting came only two days after Paz enacted the IMF arrangement into law, following a vote by Bolivia's legislature on September 18. The financing, worth $1.9 billion over 36 months, still needs a final green light from the IMF's Executive Board — a decision expected around October 2, with a first disbursement near $250 million to follow shortly after.
Rubio tied his praise to that momentum online, calling the encounter "productive" and linking Washington's continued backing to Bolivia's IMF plans and its overhaul of the fuel, mining and energy sectors.
The export number Bolivia wants to grow
Trade access was the first item on Paz's list: getting Bolivian goods into the world's largest consumer market on better terms. Bolivia's National Statistics Institute puts the country's exports to the United States at $287 million for the January-to-July stretch of this year — a sliver of the roughly $7.9 billion Bolivia shipped worldwide in the same period, most of it to China, India and Japan.
Paz described the rest of the exchange on his own social media, framing his foreign trips as reliably useful for the treasury; in his words, he has "always come back with a little money" from time spent abroad.
Drought, drug trafficking and a stronger security force
Two more items rounded out the agenda: climate and security. The two governments agreed to work together on fallout from El Niño-driven drought and to keep fighting drug trafficking, terrorism and related crime without exception. The talks also touched on giving Bolivia's police and military more logistical capacity, alongside cooperation aimed at institutional integrity and anti-corruption efforts.
A pending investment law on Washington's radar
Juan Pablo Segura, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, joined the meeting and later wrote on social media that the group had discussed a Bolivian investment bill still moving through the legislature — one that could open the door to American capital in artificial intelligence, green energy, oil and gas, and mining. A more open, diversified Bolivian economy, Segura argued, "means a more prosperous United States and Bolivia".
The New York meeting is unfolding against a tense domestic backdrop. Ending Bolivia's diesel subsidy immediately pushed interdepartmental transport fares up by as much as 60% in Cochabamba and set off blockades among carriers in the Valles Cruceños region, even as the government opened talks with transport unions to defuse the standoff, according to Bolivian outlet EJU. Gasoline subsidies, by contrast, are set to be phased out only by January 2027.
Asked by reporters whether he would seek U.S. backing if opposition-led road blockades return, Paz sidestepped the question, offering only a brief reply: "love to everyone".
What comes next for Paz in Washington
The Bolivian president faces seven-to-eight-hour days of meetings with political and business leaders before his first address to the UN General Assembly, set for September 24. Fernando Aramayo, Bolivia's minister of the presidency, had billed the Rubio sit-down in advance as a "transcendental meeting".
Neither government put a firm timeline on turning this political support into actual trade or financing gains. Exactly how much market access Bolivian products will get, and under what terms U.S. capital arrives, remains to be worked out in the weeks ahead of Paz's stay in the United States.
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