Trump can’t evict China from Latin America
The U.S. has little to offer but threats
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S E E D E D C O N T E N T
January wasn’t great for China’s interests in Latin America. Not only did Donald Trump’s soft regime-change in Venezuela grant him power over the future of the country’s oil industry. The Supreme Court in Panama voided Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison’s contract to operate two ports at either end of the Panama Canal, diluting Beijing’s leverage over the future of the waterway. That comes on top of a rash of wins by pro-Trump right-wing politicians in elections across the region, the latest being Laura Fernandez in Costa Rica.
But as I point out in my new piece in Foreign Policy Magazine, Washington should curb its enthusiasm over Latin America’s realignment.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/02/02/trump-south-america-latin-china-venezuela-brazil-argentina-mexico-right-maga-china/
Some wins for the right in the region followed similar trends as those that gave the U.S. presidency to Trump: A growing hostility towards migrants–which many countries in South America had not seen before in such numbers–and the related fear of rampant crime helped right-wing politicians who campaigned on hardline policies to restore public safety.
These parallels, however, will not necessarily align Latin America’s the right in Latin America with Trump and his wish list. Not even the most right wing of right wing governments, the most lavish in praise for the U.S. president, or the most grateful for Washington’s helping hand will be ready to deliver what the Trump administration claims to want: a continent that is disengaged from China and tied to his will.
In the U.S. National Security Strategy document released in December, Latin America features largely as a source of energy and critical minerals. Other than access to these resources, what Washington wants from countries in the region is to stamp out migration, curb the drug trade, and fend off China.
The U.S. will largely get its way in some countries–mainly those around the Caribbean rim that are already largely aligned with the United States and extremely vulnerable to its policy swings. But his ask will be a very hard sell in countries further south that have been building close economic relations with China for the past three decades.
Consider the contrast. At Washington’s behest, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s left-wing government imposed tariffs up to 50% on Chinese imports, despite the cost to Mexican consumers and businesses. Under pressure from the United States , Mexico has also taken a much more skeptical approach to Chinese investment , notably fending off plans by the world’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer, BYD, to establish a manufacturing facility in the country.
In Brazil, former right wing President Jair Bolsonaro was so aligned with Trump’s MAGA agenda that Trump imposed punitive tariffs on the country this year after its judiciary ruled against Bolsonaro for planning a military coup in 2022. Yet even this close ideological and personal connection did nothing to keep Bolsonaro from growing Brazil’s economic ties with China, whose shares of Brazil’s exports and imports both increased during his presidency.
As former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda told me, the southern half of the Western hemisphere is already largely in China’s orbit. This is not motivated by ideological alignment or common worldview. It is about economic self-interest. The vast ideological gulf between Trump and Sheinbaum, for example, is of scant relevance when the United States absorbs around 80% of Mexican exports–or about 30% of Mexico’s entire gross domestic product.
China, by contrast, is now the largest trading partner of most South American countries, far eclipsing the United States. In 2000, less than 2% of Brazilian exports went to China, according to World Bank data. By 2023, over 30% did. For Chile, those numbers rose from about 5% to more than 39% during the same period.
The U.S. share of South American exports, by contrast, declined dramatically. “Reality on the ground is already well defined,” Castañeda said. Right-wind Chilean President-elect Jose Antonio Kast “will not change the destination of Chile’s copper.”
This is not the first U.S. administration to get worked up over China’s growing footprint in Latin America. Under pressure from the Biden administration in 2021, Chile annulled a contract with a Chinese company to manufacture Chilean passports and national identification cards when U.S. officials warned it would be tough for Chile to remain in the visa waiver program if China had access to Chileans’ passport data.
The first Trump administration also leaned on Chile to reject a Huawei proposal to build a trans-Pacific undersea cable connecting Valparaiso to Shanghai. U.S.Army Gen. Laura J. Richardson, who headed U.S. Southern Command from 2021 to 2024, raised the alarm that the Chancay deepwater megaport built by China’s Cosco Shipping in Peru could “absolutely” host Chinese warships .
In some cases, ideological bonds could make it easier for Trump to push back against Chinese influence. Argentina’s libertarian President Xavier Milei is probably Washington’s most vocal supporter among Latin American leaders. He owes Trump a substantial debt after the White House offered a $20 billion swap line to Argentina in the runup to parliamentary elections last year, helping to avert a massive currency devaluation that would have sunk Milei’s movement at the polls.
In exchange, Milei nixed plans mulled by the previous Argentine government to buy Chinese-Pakistani fighter jets and instead bought several second-hand American F-16s from Denmark. He also halted a plan to build a Chinese radio telescope , and a project to build a Chinese nuclear reactor is hanging in limbo . In December, a Chinese company was blocked from bidding on a project to deepen the Parana River waterway, a crucial route for shipping Argentinian agricultural exports across the world.
But even Milei has not evicted the Chinese from their other space facility in Patagonia, which produces untold heartburn in Washington. The Argentine central bank still maintains a currency swap line with the People’s Bank of China, which the U.S. would like Argentina to disengage from . And Milei’s zero-tariff policy is turbocharging trade. Exports to China increased 57% in the 12 months to November 2025, much faster than exports to the United States. (Indeed, Washington was bent out of shape when–shortly after the U.S. Treasury offered Buenos Aires the $20 billion lifeline–, Argentina removed its export tax on soybeans, and cut a huge deal with China, which was boycotting American soybeans.)
Trump has other new ideological allies in Latin America. Chile and Bolivia have flipped from left to right since his first term; Trump allies won in Ecuador and Honduras; and the right is also expected to win in elections coming up this year in Peru and Colombia. But this doesn’t change the fact that these countries are all hungry for investment and growing markets for their exports of raw materials, both of which China offers. Trump offers mostly threats and pressure.
Given the U.S. raid in Venezuela and Washington’s threats against Greenland, it would not be surprising for Trump to believe that threats–whether military or economic--could push Latin American governments to kiss China goodbye. And yet evidence suggests that leaders in the region will not easily give away their motor of economic development, whether or not they are otherwise aligned with Trump.
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Why is the American government so afraid of China?
China is moving forward. Trump is taking America backward. That's uncomfortable.
China has built Mussolini's dream. It's not surprising to see who it's biggest cheerleaders are...
Why Bob, do progressives love a literal fascist government so much yet claim to be so deathly afraid of Trump because they imagine he'll implement policies that would make America more like China if they were implemented ..
China does everything, in spades, Progressives claim to hate about Trump, but it has no greater friend than American lefties hoping to raise the socialist flag yet again. It's
As my grandpappy told me: "Don't believe anything you read or hear, and only half of what you see". Due to the capabilities of photoshopping, special video effects and now more than ever, AI, I would add to the end of his advice: "with your own eyes, and even then not always". I laugh at the paranoia about China exhibited by those who have never stepped one foot into China.
True.
His agents are already deporting people who are caught speaking English-- the only way to avoid capture is to be fluent in Chinese.
(If you are a native English speaker, as soon as you leave your house switch to Mandarin or Cantonese to avoid capture!!!)
LOL
If you a risk-taker, you might-- possibly might- - get away with speaking Mongolian -- but let's be honest-- how many people on this site speak Mongolian?
Yep-- that's just what I thought!!!
Funny. I guess I'm wrong.
You do have access to Google, Youtube and the rest of the internet..
You can criticize the government and it's leaders.
Amnesty International and every human rights organization is lying about the concentration camps China built for Muslims where they commit all sorts of atrocities including forced sterilizations.
Political opponents, or people perceived by the leadership as opponents are never disappeared or thrown in jail..
I look forward to your lectures on America though, since you've spent so much time here during the Trump Presidency.
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(I was surprised at how many there were, and how many public outcry sucessfully stopped)
I wouldn't have known this unless I watched her show . .
I wouldn't have known this unless I watched her show . .
My daily reading list for today (Wednesday) has an article on the subject.
Yes, we have learned that a services based economy has great difficulty competing with an industrial economy. How could Milton Friedman have missed that one?
Who knew that Chile needed tangible goods? Chile just isn't interested in what the US has to offer: insurance for everything, card processing services, speculative finance brokers, and an army of middlemen that scrape money off every transaction. The US could only provide the tangible goods Chile needs by buying them from China. Chile is just eliminating the middleman.