
Uruguayan President Yamandú Orsi is this week facing public questioning over the purchase, eight days before his inauguration on 1 March 2025, of a zero-kilometre Hyundai Santa Fe SUV for an invoiced value of USD 54,000, although the model was being offered by the same company at around USD 78,990. The difference, close to USD 25,000, was confirmed by the presidential entourage as a “discount or rebate” on the transaction, without specifying whether it corresponded to a standard commercial policy of the dealership or to a particular condition extended to the then-president-elect.
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Uruguay this week filled 63% of the annual zero-tariff rice quota granted by the European Union to Mercosur, in the first significant trade milestone since the provisional entry into force, on 1 May, of the association agreement between the two blocs. The total quota of 6,667 tons for the current year was covered within a few weeks of activity, according to Acting Foreign Minister Valeria Csukasi, in what amounts to one of the first operational tests of the treaty signed on 17 January in Asunción.
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The administration of Uruguayan President Yamandú Orsi has reached its lowest approval level since he took office as head of state in March 2025, according to the national survey by the polling firm Factum released on Monday for the second two-month period of 2026. The poll places presidential approval at 29% and disapproval at 46%, while 24% of those surveyed neither approve nor disapprove of the administration. The firm describes the dynamic as “a systematic process of falling approval and rising disapproval,” confirming the trend already identified last week by the polling firm Equipos, which had placed disapproval at 48%.
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Former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, currently a candidate for the United Nations Secretary General, defended on Thursday in Montevideo the need for a more representative, inclusive, and people-centered multilateralism in the face of advancing authoritarian projects in the international order, during the keynote of the seminar Geopolitics, Multilateralism, and Risks to Gender-Parity Democracy in the New International Order. The event, organized by IDEA Internacional, is taking place at Uruguay's Legislative Palace as part of the Latin American Women in Politics Meeting, which brings together regional political leaders until Friday.

Uruguayan President Yamandú Orsi's administration recorded a significant deterioration in public approval as the government marked its first year in office, according to the latest survey by the polling firm Equipos released on Thursday on the Subrayado newscast. The president's disapproval rose to 48%, up from 40% in February, while approval fell from 33% to 27% over the same period. Intermediate assessments held roughly steady at around 23%, and 2% of respondents declined to answer.

Uruguayan President Yamandú Orsi will travel to Washington in the coming months to meet with his US counterpart Donald Trump, in a meeting that national authorities describe as agreed and awaiting only the coordination of calendars, according to Foreign Minister Mario Lubetkin's confirmation on Wednesday before the Senate International Affairs Committee. The summit would crown a series of overtures by the Broad Front government toward the Republican administration, initiated in the early weeks of Orsi's term, which began in March, and which have generated controversy within the ruling coalition itself.

Uruguayan President Yamandú Orsi made a day trip to São Paulo on Tuesday to meet Brazilian business leaders interested in investing in Uruguay, in an agenda Foreign Minister Mario Lubetkin described as an opportunity to move to a new phase in the levels of commercial development and Brazilian investments in the South American country. The official delegation included Lubetkin himself, Economy and Finance Minister Gabriel Oddone, Uruguay's ambassador to Brazil Rodolfo Nin Novoa, and the executive director of investment promotion agency Uruguay XXI, Mariana Ferreira.

Uruguayan President Yamandú Orsi visited the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz of the United States Navy in international waters off the Uruguayan coast on Saturday, in a new chapter of the Southern Seas 2026 regional deployment, following the steps of Argentine President Javier Milei and Chilean President José Antonio Kast, who had toured the same vessel in previous weeks. The invitation was extended by the US ambassador in Montevideo, Lou Rinaldi, and the delegation was transported from Carrasco Air Base No. 1 to the carrier's deck aboard a Grumman C-2 Greyhound military aircraft of the US Armed Forces.

Uruguayan President Yamandú Orsi will travel to Barcelona on Friday to attend the fourth Democracy Always summit, a gathering of 19 heads of state convened by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, where the Uruguayan leader will focus his remarks on the value of multilateralism, according to Foreign Minister Mario Lubetkin.

Uruguay's government is considering relocating within the department of Paysandú the synthetic fuels plant planned by multinational HIF Global, in an effort to simultaneously defuse diplomatic tensions with Argentina and advance what would be the largest private investment in the country's history, estimated at $5.385 billion in its final phase.