Political Economy and China's Inroads in Latin America
Published in "Socialism and Democracy," November 2026
Washington’s Faltering Pushback against China’s Latin
American Inroads
Steve Ellner
At first glance, Donald Trump's so-called "Donroe Doctrine" for Latin America appears to be little more than a replay of the Cold War and a carbon copy of the Monroe Doctrine, which Secretary of State John Kerry declared in 2013 was no longer official policy. Indeed, some analysts dismiss the notion of a Cold War II with distinctive characteristics that break with the past, preferring instead to frame it as a mere continuation of “the longue durée of U.S. imperialism” (Sharp, 2026: 59-60).
But
it goes deeper than that. The Monroe Doctrine during Cold War I had not only a
major military component but also an equally significant ideological dimension,
deceptively cast as a struggle between democracy and communism. The Donroe
Doctrine marks a shift toward a narrative that elevates militarism and national
security above soft power and ideology, and in the process provides a rationale
for using any means necessary to roll back China's growing economic and
political influence south of the border. Equally important, Trump strategists frame
the rivalry with China as a struggle over which power will dominate the
international order in all its dimensions. In Latin America, the two powers are
allegedly locked in an irreconcilable struggle; any prospect of co-existence
accompanied by routine commercial competition is ruled out.
This
article examines how Cold War II is playing out in Latin America. It first looks
at how pro-Trump policymakers, despite important differences in their analyses
and strategies, converge on viewing Cold War II as an existential struggle for
world hegemony. In doing so they evade the central issue: the U.S. is losing
its historically predominant economic position in its “back yard” and is
prepared to employ virtually any means to reverse that trend. The article will
then turn to one of the most glaring examples of the attempt to roll back China’s
gains in Latin America, namely the kidnapping of the president and first lady
of Venezuela on January 3, 2026. The remainder of the article evaluates U.S.
efforts to roll back China’s gains, which, I argue, stem from Beijing’s
superior ability to harness state and private capital to advance its economic
and political interests.
Various
other issues will be addressed and conclusions reached. First, China’s
influence in Latin America has a major political dimension and is not just
measured in the dollar value of trade and investments. Second, the aggressive
U.S. campaign to contain China's influence in the hemisphere predates the
second Trump administration since for over a decade Washington has persistently
pushed back against every major Chinese advance. The relentlessness of these
efforts calls into question the misleading argument that China's regional gains
were made possible by U.S. neglect in the region that Trump set out to remedy.
It also suggests that Chinese influence in the region has proven remarkably
resilient. Third, the support of right-wing Latin American governments for
harsh measures targeting Chinese economic interests cannot be taken for
granted, the rhetoric of the Trump-crafted “Shield of the Americas”
notwithstanding. Fourth, although the Trump administration is divided over
whether to accept China as a legitimate world power, there is a consensus that
Chinese influence in the Americas needs to be combated on all fronts.
Finally,
the ideological dimension of the rivalry between Washington and Beijing in
Latin America defies simplistic interpretation. The portrayal of Confucius
Institutes as a fifth column dedicated to spreading Chinese propaganda is
lacking in substance. At the same time, however, the interests of China are
best served by progressive governments and political parties on the left. In
general, the relationship between Beijing’s rhetoric and actions, the Latin American
Left and Chinese interests belies simplistic interpretations.
Tactics and Strategies in the Alleged
Struggle for Hegemony
The
recognition, in the words of the conservative Center for Strategic
International Studies (CSIS), that “the principal concern of the Trump
Corollary [to the Monroe Doctrine] is China” (Berg, 2026) contrasts with
Washington’s former narrative on the need to confront “U.S. adversaries”
wherever they may be – i.e. Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, in addition to China. Indeed,
the theory known as “flexible realism” – which thanks to right-wing theorist
Elbridge Colby has become a watchword of the Trump administration’s foreign
policy – holds that U.S. overextension compels Washington to make hard choices,
specifically to prioritize conflicts with China and downplay those involving
Russia and the Middle East. Mike Waltz, shortly before Trump named him UN
ambassador in 2025, along with the Atlantic Council’s Matthew Kroenig, recommended
that the U.S. “bring the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East to a swift
conclusion, and finally focus strategic attention where it should be:
countering the greater threat from the Chinese Communist Party” (The
Economist, 2024).
Washington
has had to craft a new discourse to justify targeting China, as the old Cold
War arguments for intervention—communism versus democracy – are no longer
credible. The centerpiece of this strategically constructed narrative is the
claim that drug trafficking and the promotion of immigration constitute forms
of terrorism, thereby warranting a military response. Trump’s National Security
Strategy of 2026 also includes espionage in the category of “cross-border
threats” that it defines as a military-style “invasion” (White House, 2025:
11).
If
the United States is in a state of war, absolute control over its borders
becomes an imperative. That translates into keeping China out of the Americas. In
other words, the primary target of the discursive innovation centered on
narcoterrorism is China. Obviously, combating drugs, immigration and espionage and
guaranteeing national security are not the real objectives, any more than
democracy was during the Cold War.
Trump’s
National Security Strategy document, in the words of one Miami-based think tank
publication, also warns of the possible “arrival of strategic military
capabilities from China.” The same paper points out that Trump’s strategy toward
Latin America is intended to prevent China and other adversaries “from using
drug and human trafficking as a battering ram against the political and social
stability of the United States.” Just to drive home the extent to which the
National Security Strategy portrays the United States as being in a state of
war with China in the Western Hemisphere, the paper states: “The link and
intertwining of transnational threats such as mass migration, drug and human
trafficking, and the hybrid warfare strategies of rivals like China, Russia,
Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, etc., are present throughout the document” (Calle,
2026).
Other
statements from Washington policymakers likewise portray Latin America as a strategic
battleground that pits the United States against China and demands
extraordinary action. Marco Rubio, for instance, insists that Chinese leaders
“care only about power and influence” in the region. He adds that China appears
willing to forfeit profit by pursing “projects that may not make sense from a
market standpoint because it makes sense for them from a geopolitical
standpoint” (U.S. Government Publishing Office, 2022). Thus domination, more
than economic gain, is China’s endgame. Actually, Rubio’s assertion contains an
element of truth. As in the case of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the Chinese
government steers private capital toward infrastructure and other areas of
strategic importance, thus advancing both economic and geopolitical interests. This
approach to mobilizing private capital largely distinguishes China from
capitalist nations.
Trump's
new strategy toward Latin America took shape with the launching of the
"Shield of the Americas" in Doral, Florida in March 2026. The summit
brought together 12 right-wing presidents whose New Right political movements endorse
the militarization of the war on drugs and share Washington's view of China as
an existential threat. Some of them owe their electoral victories partly to
Trump, who intervened on their behalf in ways including economic inducements,
bribes (amounting to $40 billion in the case of Argentina), and economic
threats (as in Colombia and Honduras) as a means to sway voters.
At
the time they reached power, many of these MAGA-style presidents of the New
Right (referred to as the “orange wave”) distinguished themselves from the
traditional right precisely on the anti-China rhetoric they employed. Thus, for
instance, during the 2023 presidential campaign, Javier Milei referred to China
as a “murderous regime” and ruled out promoting commercial relations with that
nation, saying “I don’t do business with Communists.” In contrast, traditional rightist
President Mauricio Macri, who subsequently supported Milei’s presidential bid
and whose party maintains an uneasy alliance with Macri’s party, welcomed Xi
Jinping to Buenos Aires in 2018 and praised "the level of friendship that
we are building between our countries" (Casa Rosada, 2018).
At
its founding summit in Doral, Florida, the Shield of the Americas polarized the
region by, in effect, pitting progressive Latin American governments against
the participating right-wing ones. The meeting linked two campaigns, both of
which the progressive governments of Brazil, Mexico and Colombia (which since
March 2026 has fallen to the far right) were unwilling to endorse. It paired the
goal of combating Chinese influence, under the mantra of opposing “foreign
interference,” with a call for an anti-drug “military alliance” – also called
the “Counter-Cartel Coalition” – justified by the claim that the police are not
up to the task. The governments of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia were, in the
words of the influential foreign policy pundit Christopher Sabatini, “pointedly
absent” and were reportedly not even invited (Mexico News Daily, 2026).
Emerging
from the summit was a narrative that held those three progressive governments responsible
for (according to Sabatini) “host[ing] a large part of the region’s illicit
markets including narcotics production and trade – the supposed targets of the
summit” (Mexico News Daily, 2026). At the summit, Trump singled out
Mexico for being “the epicenter of cartel violence” (Chávez and Politi, 2026). He
also reiterated the possibility of U.S. unilateral military intervention in the
nation along with the use of missiles, even though President Claudia Sheinbaum
has adamantly opposed even joint military operations against the cartels.
In
another area that separates progressive and rightist governments, Pete Hegseth,
who has constantly warned that "China's military has too large of a
presence in the Western Hemisphere,” insisted at Doral on “burden sharing”
(Zamorano, 2025; Olay, 2026). That’s another way of saying that just as Europe is
called upon to foot much of the bill for its own defense, Latin American
governments are obliged to do the same to counter narco-terrorism. Under-Secretary
of State Colby spelled out the details a few months later at the Conference of
Defense Ministers of the Americas in Cusco, Peru. There he called on Latin
America to emulate Europe’s benchmark of 3.5 percent of GDP allotted to “core
military spending” and 1.5% going to “security-related expenditures.” He also urged
his Latin American colleagues to “align with America’s defense industry” (that
is, not Europe’s), as an antidote to China’s military inroads in the region
(Colby, 2026: 8).
The
new bloc of pro-Trump governments in the region, together with Washington’s
willingness to employ coercive measures including tariffs, sanctions and military
deployment, appears to jeopardize China’s continued presence in Latin America. Right-wing
think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation are upbeat as they highlight Trump’s
achievements in checking Chinese influence, a claim cautiously reproduced by the
corporate media. The Hill announced, “The new Monroe Doctrine is in full
force and for the first time in decades Chinese influence in Latin America is
receding” (Mcfields, 2026).
Some
in Washington gleefully interpreted the January 3, 2026 military incursion into
Venezuela as evidence that China is unwilling to come to the military defense
of its allies in the region. In the words of the neocon Foundation for Defense
of Democracies, it exposed the gulf between China’s “great power rhetoric and
its real reach” (Martina, Hunnicutt and Brunnstrom, 2026). Along those lines, Under-Secretary
of Defense Colby pointed out that military action in both Venezuela and Iran
demonstrates that China lacks a “global military” (Douthat , 2026). Other trumpeted successes in the
region include Panama’s annulment in January 2026 of a deal that gave a Hong
Kong-based conglomerate control of the management of two ports, as well as
strong counter-China clauses that the right-wing governments of Argentina,
Ecuador and El Salvador included in recent reciprocal trade agreements with the
U.S. The claims regarding China’s unfavorable prospects, however, belie the
complexity of some of the factors at play and overlook others that work to Beijing’s
advantage in the region, as will be discussed below.
Washington Views China’s Endgame
The
Donroe Doctrine did not emerge in a vacuum, nor can it be simply viewed as an
aberration stemming from Trump’s illusions and penchant for bluster. The
Donroe Doctrine reflects the consensus in Washington that China’s continued
inroads into Latin America were unacceptable, and that a change of course was
imperative. In spite of the Democrats’ fixation on Russia, Biden’s Secretary of
State Antony Blinken stated in 2022: “Even as President Putin’s war continues,
we will remain focused on the most serious long-term challenge to the
international order – and that’s posed by… China” (Blinken, 2022). That is,
neither Russia nor terrorism is the main target. Viewed from this perspective, whether
a centrist Democrat or a Republican occupies the White House in 2029, the
administration will retain the Donroe Doctrine’s basic premise: the need to
prioritize countering Chinese influence in Latin America above all else.
Nevertheless,
the facts speak for themselves. The Chinese threat is mainly about economics
not the struggle for hegemonic supremacy. In 2013-2014, China overtook the U.S.
as South America’s leading trade partner at a time when Chinese overseas
investments were shifting from the Global North to the Global South. By 2024
Chinese merchandise trade with South America was over 50 percent greater than
U.S trade with the continent.
While
intense hostility toward China characterizes Washington's foreign policy
establishment, those close to Trump take anti-China rhetoric to another level. As
just one example, Mike Waltz has called China "the most difficult, pernicious enemy the
U.S. has ever faced" (FoxBusiness,
2023).
The
focus on domination and hegemony, which is the distinguishing feature of
pro-Trump analysis, is deceptive. Beijing is not currently pursuing the kind of
comprehensive system of control associated with U.S. imperialism, encompassing military,
cultural and political domination through a wide range of institutions,
policies and actions. Beijing is more narrowly focused on promoting its economic
interests and advancing specific, well-defined, political objectives – a far
cry from the pursuit of hegemony (Bernal-Meza, 2021: 277). China expert Patricia M. Kim notes that in spite of the “more proactive phase of foreign policy”
associated with Xi, Beijing is “not trying to replace Washington as a global
leader or take on the burdens traditionally associated with superpower status.”
Rather it is “prioritizing its narrow interests” (Kim, 2026).
Trump’s
Latin America policy reflects two broad tendencies, each identified with
different policymakers. The ‘no compromise with the enemy’ hardliners include
Rubio, Colby, Waltz, and CIA director John Ratcliffe. The ‘transactional’
tendency is largely associated with the America First or ‘Americas First’
slogan which prioritizes U.S. economic interests. Tension between the two
approaches occasionally manifests itself. Throughout 2025, for instance, the
transactional group supported Trump’s decision to renew Chevron’s license to
drill in Venezuela and other deals with the Maduro government secured by Trump special
envoy Richard Grenell. Many hardliners criticized the arrangement on grounds
that negotiations with Maduro undermined the goal of regime change (Ellner,
2025). But events in 2026 in Venezuela demonstrated that when it comes to Chinese
influence in Latin America the two tendencies (despite momentary differences) tend
to converge (Foster, 2025: 9). The removal of Maduro fulfilled the hardliner goal
of regime change of an ally of China. That achievement was followed by the
administration of Venezuelan oil revenue by businessman Mauricio Claver-Carone,
who is identified with the Americas First tendency. China went from recipient
of 80 percent of Venezuela’s oil to zero percent, while colonial-style licenses
imposed by the U.S. Treasury Department explicitly bar China from Venezuela’s
strategic sectors (Harris, forthcoming). Moreover, in August 2026, Trump
announced what he called “the biggest oil deal in world history” with
Venezuela, an agreement that would displace China from several oil fields in
which it had acquired a presence under previous agreements.
Although
Claver-Carone explicitly did not object to Chinese commerce in general, he was
a China hawk on Latin America who denounced Chinese state-directed investment
as instruments of geopolitical power in the continent. Furthermore, he is a
longtime ally of hawk Marco Rubio, together with whom (according to Claver-Carone)
he “created the architecture of the foreign policy for Latin America” of the
first Trump administration (Lejtman, 2025).
Pro-Trump
and other Washington policymakers portray Beijing as ultimately seeking to
dominate Latin America. Three areas of alarm regarding China’s alleged long-term
goals point in this direction and all three are misleading to varying degrees. The
most far-fetched is that Beijing envisions a world of authoritarianism and thus
follows a policy of siding with dictatorial governments through – in the words
of one National Endowment for Democracy offshoot – “authoritarian partnerships”
(Center for International Private Enterprise, 2025). Latin American examples
included the governments of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. At the same time,
China follows a conscious policy of attempting to, in the words of Trump’s 2020
National Security Strategy, “discredit democracy” (White House, 2020: 7). Similarly,
strategist Julian Gewirtz, who served under Biden, claims that China has sought “to fundamentally change
aspects of the international order to favor its authoritarian system of
government [and] state-dominated political economy” (Gewirtz: 2025).
A
second thesis, which also fails to stand up to empirical scrutiny, posits, in
the words of Colby, that “Beijing’s vision is to make China… the dominant global economy, with
all the myriad advantages that are the perquisites of such wealth and power”
(Colby, n.d.). Right-wing and conservative think tanks such as the Heritage
Foundation, the Hudson Institute and the CSIS inadvertently echo Marxist
theories of imperialism in highlighting the twin economic imperatives of
finding outlets for excess productive capacity and securing foreign sources of
energy and raw materials.[1] In characterizing the China threat, these think tanks don’t hesitate to
invoke terms like neo-colonialism and “Sino-Imperialism” (Thayer,
2019). Also mirroring Lenin’s concept of inter-imperialist rivalry, the CSIS
warns that China’s “market monopolization” in Latin America, will “squeeze out
opportunities for local and U.S. investors,” as is occurring with the
state-owned China Southern Power Grid electricity company in Peru (Berg
et. al., 2025).
Again, although the
anti-China narrative has achieved a bipartisan consensus in Washington, the
hawks associated with Trump tend to frame the issue of economic rivalry more in
terms of hegemonic competition. Colby credits the “New Right” with introducing
realism (or his brand of it) into U.S. policymaking, and for making the case
that economic prosperity hinges on “who controls political power” at the
international level (Colby, n.d.).
The argument for classifying
China as a hegemonic-seeking imperialist power has numerous holes, the most
glaring of which is the nation’s limited world-wide military deployment.
Historically, imperialist powers have combined an extensive overseas military
presence with a willingness to resort to force in defense of their interests,
all the more so in the case of rising powers seeking to close the gap with
their more advanced rivals. Furthermore, while Chinese leaders
may regard socialism as inevitable, they do not envision its realization in the
foreseeable future, but focus instead on the promotion of a multipolar world
order. In the words of Wu Xinbo a leading China scholar quoted in the New
York Times, China seeks to “build a consensus so that the United States
could no longer dictate the agenda alone and to take a larger role in powering
the world economy” (Pierson, 2026: A9).
A
third thesis – in this case containing one element of truth, but no more – is
that China is exporting its own economic model, which is sometimes labelled
“market socialism.” More commonly, however, the narrative collapses political
authoritarianism and China’s economic system into a single threat (Holmes,
2010). Occasionally, pro-Trump policymakers raise the specter of an ideological
battle along the lines of Cold War I. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
warned that “China work[s] to undercut American leadership by spreading ‘socialism
with Chinese characteristics’ overseas” (Pompeo,
2021). Unsurprisingly Marco Rubio also injects ideology into the narrative. He
highlights Xi’s ideological commitments and claims that he has ordered the
Chinese Communist Party to “liberate all of humanity’’ and serve as the
‘‘gravediggers of capitalism” (Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations,
2023).
Half
a century of Chinese leadership leaves no evidence to doubt the authenticity of
Beijing’s post-Mao discourse, even under Xi. The Chinese government avoids
universality and denies that it is exporting a model or ideology (Zhu, 2021:
218). Typically, Xi defends “the principle of independence and… diversified
paths towards modernization,” which is not "an exclusive patent of a small
handful of countries” (Xi, 2023). The Chinese
government does, however, indicate to leaders of the global South that China’s
achievements in eradicating critical poverty, its resilience to economic
shocks, and robust growth hold insights for their own development paths. But
the nearest these statements come to endorsing socialism is their reference to
state planning, which is carefully framed in the context of China’s particular
historical circumstances (Aberg and Becker, 2020: 819-820, 825). In both its
actions and rhetoric, there is nothing comparable to the USSR’s commitment to
advancing the socialist cause.
Economic and political models are
exported through “soft power,” a strategy that Washington accuses the Confucius
Institutes (CIs) of employing. In 2004, the Chinese Education Ministry founded
the CI program, which is overseen by individual universities throughout the
world with the aim of promoting Chinese language and culture. The Heritage
Foundation calls the CIs a “Trojan Horse” designed to spread Communist Party
propaganda. And it claims the program encourages self-censorship of host
institutions and is involved in industrial espionage (Edwards, 2021;
Schallhorn, 2015). In fact, objective studies – even ones not particularly
sympathetic to China – demonstrate that the CIs engage in limited political
messaging and that host institutions retain considerable control (Shuto, 2018).
Pro-Washington pundits are especially
concerned about the effectiveness of the 43 CIs in Latin America, which they
claim operate in areas of strategic and economic interests as well as “cultural
hubs” (White House, 2025: 15, 17). CIs, it is argued, are instruments of
Chinese economic expansion and are bent on securing Chinese influence in
strategically vital Panama (White House, 2025: 19). Whatever influence the
Confucius Institute may wield, it pales in comparison with the interventionist
operations of U.S. agencies and Washington-based NGOs.
At this point, a synthesis of the
discussion of the pro-Trump narrative on China and the struggle for hegemony is
in order. The claim that China seeks total domination in Latin America with the
endgame of authoritarianism, economic supremacy, or socialism, and that to this
end it employs espionage and is laying the groundwork for a military presence,
is, at best, highly deceptive. The alarmist rhetoric behind this claim masks
the underlying source of the conflict: China’s economic challenge to the U.S. Such
distortion of the real issues is nothing new. McCarthyism in the 1950s
concealed the U.S. ruling class’s principal concern which was the advance of a
progressive movement sustained by militant trade unionism, more than Communist
Party USA inroads. Similarly, the rhetoric of the Cold War hid Washington’s
apprehension regarding the advance of third-world nationalism. In all three
cases, fearmongering enabled the U.S. ruling class to divert attention from the
real source of concern, which did not lend itself as readily to demonization:
the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, Third-World nationalism, and
China’s economic competition.
The
Empire Strikes Back on January 3, 2026
The military actions against the Maduro
government, consisting of the lethal bombing of dozens of boats, the seizure of
oil tankers and ultimately the January 3 military incursion, provided the
clearest demonstration of how far Trump is willing to go to reduce China’s
foothold in the hemisphere. The justification of these atrocities – that
“Venezuela is invading us with drugs, criminals and immigrants” – was nothing
short of ludicrous and surreal. The disconnect between the rhetoric of
pro-Trump policymakers and the real motivation having to do with the success of
China’s state-directed economic expansion, was typical of the Trump
administration’s discourse on China in general.
China was very much at the center of U.S.
motivations for the incursion, just as it has been in “Operation Epic Fury”
against Iran. In the first place, Venezuela maintained a special relationship
with China that was unrivaled in the region. During Maduro’s 2023 visit, Xi
announced that China was elevating Venezuela to an “All-Weather Strategic
Partnership,” a privileged status accorded to no other country in the
hemisphere. Furthermore, China’s 62 billion dollars in loans from Chinese state
banks was over double that extended to Brazil, the second largest recipient,
and over triple that received by Ecuador and Argentina, which ranked third and
fourth, far ahead of the rest of Latin America (Ferchen, 2020: 9).
In the second place, the Maduro
government had successfully circumvented U.S.-imposed sanctions by selling
about 80 percent of its oil to China through a network of “shadow fleets”
(shipping companies with fake flags that change names and turn off tracking).
The system proved effective, as evidenced by the doubling of Venezuelan oil
production by 2025, while the economy was showing signs of recovery
(Emersberger, forthcoming). The Atlantic Council warned that “Moscow is likely
to adopt Venezuela’s approach” and advised U.S. enforcement authorities to take
strict measures to “disrupt Venezuela’s ongoing sanctions evasion efforts”
(Nikoladze, 2025). And in the third place, the trade bypassed the
U.S.-dominated financial clearing system as China paid for the oil mainly in
yuan and cryptocurrency, thus undermining the supremacy of the dollar (Ellner,
forthcoming).
Less
Successful Arenas of U.S. Pushback
One China Policy. None
of the New Right leaders who have come to power in the larger South American
countries have translated their movements’ venomous anti-China rhetoric into
steps toward restoring relations with Taiwan. In Brazil, Argentina, Chile,
Peru, Ecuador and Colombia, far-right presidents have been confronted with the
harsh reality of an economy heavily dependent on China as well as pressure from
the private sector to avoid diplomatic tensions that would jeopardize those
ties. Thus, for instance, during the 2018 presidential campaign in Brazil, Jair
Bolsonaro traveled to Taiwan – an unusual move that was criticized by Beijing –
at the same time that he lashed out at Lula’s government for being “friendly
with communist regimes” (Stuenkel, 2018). Once in power, however, Bolsonaro
reversed his position on China, as the right-wing president Javier Milei of
Argentina was to do several years later. The political weight of private
economic interests is well illustrated in the case of Paraguay, where the
soybean and beef sectors have questioned the rationale behind the country’s
continued diplomatic recognition of Taiwan. During Paraguay’s 2023 elections,
the head of a major organization of farmers and cattle producers complained
“We're a food-producing nation that is not selling to the world's biggest buyer
of food” (Elliot and Desantis, 2024).
During Trump’s first term, Washington
adopted a more assertive stance in support of Taiwan. In 2018, the Trump
administration announced that El Salvador’s decision to switch diplomatic ties
from Taiwan to Beijing “will result in a re-evaluation of our relationship”
with San Salvador (Ching, 2018). Washington conveyed a similar warning to
Nicaragua and Honduras, which transferred diplomatic recognition to Beijing in
2021 and 2023 respectively. Then in 2025 Trump ally and U.S. ambassador in
Panama Kevin Cabrera attended the swearing in of nine congresspeople of
Panama’s National Assembly, including its president, as members of the
Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC). Co-founded by Marco Rubio, IPAC
supports “countries that have tried to stand up to Beijing have mostly done so
alone — and often at great cost." In language worthy of The Godfather,
Cabrera told the parliamentarians, “the United States is an ally and a friend
and we help our friends” (Cárdenas, 2025). The incident illustrates the duality
of a Washington-supported New Right that promotes anti-China sentiment, but
whose presidents are less keen on antagonizing Beijing.
The position of Latin American
governments as a whole was put on display in 2025, when the U.S. and its allies
strongly backed Taiwan’s unsuccessful bid to participate in the annual meeting
of the World Health Organization (WHO). The pro-Taiwan resolution was sponsored
by Belize and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, two of the seven Latin American
nations (all small in size) that still recognize Taipei. The rest of the
continent remained silent on the proposal, including conservative governments
like Ecuador and Peru, even while Taiwan spotlighted the position of Ecuadoran
congresspeople who favored Taiwan’s participation in the WHO (Reuters, 2025; Taiwan
Today, 2019).
One auspicious development for Washington
was the election of New Right leader Nasry Asfura as president of Honduras in
2025, following his pledge to restore diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Washington
think tanks raised the possibility that the example of Asfura would influence
governments in the region to reexamine their relations with Beijing. Some
pro-Trump analyses credited Trump with offering Honduras economic incentives
conditional on Asfura’s electoral victory. According to this line of thinking,
Trump’s intrusion showed “how the United States is reasserting influence in
Latin America through overt political signaling.” Most important, Asfura’s
hoped-for alignment with Taiwan will “challenge the assumption that recognition
of Beijing is irreversible” (Herrera Ramos, 2025).
Such optimism regarding Taiwan’s cause is
far from well founded. At the time of this writing in September 2026, 8 months
after Asfura assumed office and in spite of all the anti-Beijing rhetoric, a
decision still has not been reached. More important, the fact that the avidly
pro-Trump, Pinochetista, anti-communist president of Chile José Antonio Kast
has sought to maintain close ties with China clearly demonstrates that business
interests trump ideology when it comes to relations with Beijing in Latin
America.
The Belt and Road Initiative.
The militarization of U.S. foreign policy under the mantra of national
security, coupled with the Trump administration’s growing reliance on coercive
measures, has manifested itself in Washington’s efforts to put the brakes on
China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Beijing’s decision in 2018 to extend
the BRI to Latin America was a bold – if not openly defiant – move that ran
counter to the notion that the region was a U.S. sphere of influence.
The second Trump administration has
sought to roll back the Belt and Road Initiative by attempting to restrict
Chinese participation in strategic infrastructure and technology. Their most
important success to date was the intimidation of president José Raúl Mulino of
Panama (the first country to join the BRI) into cancelling its participation in
the BRI. Rubio gloated at the possibility of a domino effect in which “If we
really push hard on this, a lot of countries… are going to rethink” their agreements
with China (Phillips, 2025).
While some (though not all) of the
smaller vulnerable nations in Central America and the Caribbean have kowtowed
to U.S. pressure, the same cannot be said of the larger ones in Latin America.
Even center-right governments – those of Argentina’s Mauricio Macri, Chile’s
Sebastián Piñera and Uruguay’s Luis Lacalle Pou –welcomed the BRI’s decision to
expand into Latin America. Macri, for instance, attended the landmark First
Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing in May 2017, and
stated, “this is an opportunity that we can’t let pass” (Casa Rosada
Presidencia, 2017).
Even worse for Washington, the Trump
administration’s pressure on Peru’s recently elected right-wing president,
Keiko Fujimori, to distance her country from Beijing over China’s input in
BRI’s flagship project – the Chancay deepwater megaport – has fallen on deaf
ears. Chancay is the only South American Pacific coast port capable of handling
fully loaded container ships, at the same time that it bypasses the use of the
Panama Canal and reduces shipping time to China from 35 to 23 days.
U.S. policymakers raised the specter of
the “dual-use” of Chancay serving commercial interests and those of the Chinese
Navy. The Hudson Institute voiced the fear that China “will use its container
shipping power to coerce their political allegiance by restricting supplies,
banning non-Chinese ships from loading at Chinese or Chinese-controlled
terminals, or imposing outright embargos,” in addition to intelligence
gathering (O’Dea, 2024). Peruvian stakeholders, however, view U.S. security
concerns as, in the words of one scholar, “exaggerated” (Craig-Scheckman, 2025:
152). Referring to Keiko Fujimori’s posture, Bloomberg observed: “That a leader
with strong personal ties to the United States should adopt such a balanced
position [between Beijing and Washington] reflects the limits of Trump’s
attempt to displace China from Latin America” (Samon Ros, 2025). Indeed,
nothing came of Claver-Carone’s proposal to impose a 60% tariff on imports from
any country routing goods through Chancay (Ammachchi, 2024).
The limits of Washington’s anti-China
strategy in Latin America were also illustrated in the case of another major
BRI project, the Jorge Cepernic and Néstor Kirchner dams in Santa Cruz,
Argentina. Center-right president Macri had supported the project, but Milei in
the context of the anti-China rhetoric of his early months in office allowed it
to lapse in 2023. The resultant loss of 2,800 jobs on the dam project prompted
Milei to reexamine his position on Chinese capital. By 2025, Argentina’s
leading newspaper La Nación observed that “Milei is attempting to strike
a balance between his privileged relationship with the United States and the
need to maintain ties with China.” The same article pointed to the
“preoccupation of most of the nation’s governors with Chinese investments” with
regard to the hard-line anti-China rhetoric of Trump loyalist Peter Lamelas,
who was appointed ambassador to Argentina (Rosembert, 2025). In February 2026,
the Milei government signed the United States–Argentina Agreement on Reciprocal
Trade, which appeared to place in doubt the continuance of the Santa Cruz
project. The Agreement commits Argentina to “ensure a level playing field for
U.S. companies in Argentina’s market with respect to state companies” of other
countries and to “cooperate with the United States on matters related to
investment security” (meaning investment in areas such as infrastructure).
Given that the Santa Cruz dams were being constructed by the China Gezhouba
Group Company, a state-owned enterprise financed largely by the state-owned
China Development Bank, the Agreement evidently committed the Milei government
to reassessing its relations with the Chinese company. Nevertheless, just a
month after the signing of the Agreement, the Milei government announced the
reinitiation of the project. The juxtaposition of the Agreement and the
resumption of construction points to one clear conclusion: Milei does not want
to jeopardize his privileged status with the Trump Administration, but neither is
he willing to alienate China as he rashly did in the early days of his
presidency.
The complete failure of Biden’s ambitious
Build Back Better World (B3W) initiative, designed to compete
with the BRI, revealed the comparative advantages of China’s political-economic
system. Launched in June 2021, the B3W was in many ways counterproductive in
that it revealed Washington’s inability to match the Chinese despite its stated
intentions to do so (Strange, 2022: 406). Indeed, the Council on Foreign
Relations recognized that the B3W’s infrastructure plan “can’t compete with
China” (Crystal, 2021). A year after the B3W’s creation, a study of the program
indicated: “The U.S.’s B3W strategy has so far consisted of patchwork
commitments… Direct budgetary funding is not expected to come close to that of
China’s BRI” (Liao and Beal, 2022). In addition to its meager funding,
recipient countries generally objected to Washington’s portrayal of its aid
program as part of a broader “anti-China campaign” (Nymalm, 2026: 8; Daalder
and Lindsay, 2019: 51).
China’s COVID program.
The contrasting responses of China and the U.S. to the COVID pandemic shed
light on the differences between their political-economic systems as well as
China’s foreign policy. Beijing’s actions and the positions it assumed during
the pandemic underscored Xi’s prioritization of relations with the Global
South. By mid-2021, China had supplied more vaccine doses to low- and
middle-income countries than all Western nations combined.[2] In
addition, China moved much earlier than the United States in supplying other
nations a wide range of medical supplies, equipment, and technical assistance even
before vaccines became available.
Beijing’s response to the pandemic illuminates
an additional dimension of post-Mao China. Under the leadership of Deng
Xiaoping beginning in 1978, China shifted away from Soviet-style
internationalism and ruled out costly ideological and material commitments to
the Global South. China cancelled or renegotiated many existing interest-free
loans and tied foreign assistance to commercial objectives, at the same time
that Deng warned “our strength is limited, as is our role” (Deng, 1982). Xi
continued this policy; his emphasis on the defense of national sovereignty amounted
to an implicit rejection of Mao’s practice of backing revolutionary movements
worldwide.
While Xi rejects altruism as a basic
element of foreign policy (South China Morning Post, 2017: 6), he has
sought to achieve what he repeatedly calls a “win-win” relationship with nations
of the Global South. Nowhere was this more evident than in China’s overseas COVID
campaign. Beijing largely aligned with the proposal introduced by South
Africa and India at the WTO in October 2020 and supported by over 100 mostly
developing countries for waiving restrictions on intellectual property rights related
to COVID for the duration of the pandemic. In defending its stance specifically
with regard to COVID vaccines, Beijing called them a “global
public good” (Nguyen, 2021; Rubiolo and Telias, 2023: 61). In contrast the
Western powers and big pharma argued that any modification of existing
regulations would impede much-needed innovation for confronting the pandemic (although
in May 2021, the Biden administration modified its position by supporting “liberalization”).
During the COVID pandemic, China’s
transfer of COVID technology was unmatched by Western companies, particularly
the two main vaccine producers Pfizer and Moderna (AstraZeneca’s record was
somewhat better) (Palmer, 2022). In Brazil, Chile and Mexico, Sinovac and other
Chinese companies took steps to enter into partnership with local firms which
resulted in fill-finish arrangements in the case of Mexico and Brazil, and
plans for manufacturing in Chile. The most successful arrangement was the
construction of a plant run by São Paulo’s prestigious Butantan Institute for
the production of Sinovac COVID vaccine.
The contrast between the U.S. and China’s
stances was particularly pronounced during the critical high point of the
crisis in 2020 and the early months of the Biden administration. In April 2020,
Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to restrict the export of COVID
medical supplies abroad, followed by an executive order to “ensure” complete
U.S. immunization prior to exporting vaccines. The Chinese Foreign Ministry
called these practices “hoarding,” which it claimed to be "no different
from strangling developing countries' vulnerable anti-epidemic lifeline"
(Xinhua, 2021). The accusation aligned with the claim by Global South nations that
the pandemic exposed the inequity of the system of intellectual property at the
international level.
Corporate media framed China’s
international COVID response dismissively as “COVID diplomacy,” while often describing
U.S. overseas COVID actions as “humanitarian assistance.” The right-wing American
Enterprise Institute (AEI) called China’s two main vaccines “second-rate” and
“inferior” as did pro-establishment voices within Latin America buttressed by a
secret Pentagon media campaign to discredit Beijing’s COVID efforts abroad
(Scissors, 2021; La Nación, 2021; Bing and Schectman, 2024). The claim that
“China’s COVID vaccines fail” was especially deceptive (Axios, 2021; Jia and
Lu, 2021: 14-19). A
World Health Organization study found that two doses of China’s Sinovac
COVID-19 vaccine achieved 100 percent effectiveness in preventing severe
COVID-19 and hospitalization, even though it was less effective in preventing
infection itself (World Health Organization, 2022).
In line with the anti-China vaccine campaign,
Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro in October 2020 declared “the Brazilian
people will not be anyone’s guinea pig” (Savarese, 2020). Bolsonaro, however,
was forced to reverse course by street protests, pressure from within his own
government, and the prospect of the Butantan Institute partnering with Sinovac to
produce vaccines. A mere three months later, Bolsonaro went on record stating
that the Sinovac vaccine was “the vaccine of Brazil” (Teófilo and Soares, 2021;
Wright, 2021: 98).
China’s international response to the
pandemic mirrored its economic-political system. On the one hand, just 15
percent of China’s exported vaccines came in the form of donations, a smaller
proportion than some Western nations (Vadlamannati and Sun, 2023: 71). But the
scope, scale, and immediateness of China’s response to the crisis were
unmatched by the United States and its allies and constituted a level of
mobilization most compatible with a state that is relatively autonomous
vis-à-vis capitalist interests. Moreover, China’s
willingness to establish production partnerships and share technology – but
with limits and some gaps between rhetoric and action – also demonstrated that
China is hardly a capitalist state, the existence of a large capitalist class
notwithstanding.
Convergences:
China and the Global South
Defense of National Sovereignty.
Trump’s foreign policy has prompted accusations of violation of national
sovereignty from actors well beyond the traditional Latin American left, while
the range of condemned actions has broadened beyond military intervention and
support for military coups. These include tariffs as a political tool, the use
of sanctions – restricting access to financial services, the U.S. market and
technology – as a centerpiece of foreign policy, open endorsement of and
support for electoral candidates, boisterous threats of military action, and pressure
on domestic courts and lawfare.
In the latter case, it’s not hard to
document what one scholar called the “asymmetries” in which anti-corruption campaigns
target the left (Weis, 2022: 924). Nearly all South American leftist presidents
have been victims, prompting their followers in every case to accuse Washington
of direct involvement (as obviously occurred with Lula) and of bolstering the
broader machinery of lawfare. Presidents and vice-presidents include Lula (who
was jailed), Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (under house arrest and barred from
running for office), Rafael Correa (in de facto exile as a result of an 8-year
sentence), Evo Morales (criminal proceedings against him), Pedro Castillo
(ex-president of Peru currently serving an 11-year sentence), Fernando Lugo (as
president of Paraguay, victim of a parliamentary coup justified on legal
grounds), Jorge Glas (Ecuador’s ex-vice-president currently held in a
maximum-security prison), and, of course, Maduro.
The heightened scope of U.S.
interventionism is underpinned by such opportunistically interpreted doctrines
as the “Responsibility to Protect (R2P).” The Chinese have lashed out at
interventionism in Libya and Syria “under the pretext of ‘Responsibility to
Protect’” (BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific, 2012). China’s defense of the principle
of national sovereignty, dating from even before the 1955 Bandung conference,
could hardly be more at odds with the U.S.’s assertion of the right to
intervene.
Under Trump, the justification for the
U.S. position on intervention takes a new form in Colby’s doctrine of “flexible
realism.” While rejecting the U.S. role of world policeman, Colby legitimates
the deployment of U.S. military force when necessary to defend core national
security interests in strategically important regions. Although it was conceived
primarily with the Indo-Pacific in mind, the logic of “flexible realism” is most
compelling in the U.S.’s traditional sphere of influence, namely the Americas.
The Economist
pointed to the danger that Trump-style interventionism would “push Latin
America towards China” (The Economist, 2025: 37-38), a warning
unheeded by right-wing think tanks. Popular opposition and resistance abound. When
Lula confronted Trump over tariff threats, his popularity shot up, at which
point he decided to run for reelection in October, 2026. Although few
mainstream papers focused attention on them, protests against the kidnapping of
Maduro and First Lady Celia Flores featured “Yankee go Home” signs in rallies throughout
the region including in Colombia where President Gustavo Petro promoted them
(Hacthoun, 2026).
A major source of concern for The
Economist was undoubtedly the ability of China to win over or neutralize a
large part of the world against the U.S. and its close allies on the issues of
non-intervention, multi-polarity and respect for plurality as principles. This success
was reflected in UN resolutions, such as a China co-sponsored Human Rights
Council (HRC) proposal in 2020 that pointed to “the urgent need to promote…
multilateralism,” and “the elimination of double standards and politicization” on
issues of human rights, adding “each state has the inalienable right to… develop
in accordance with the sovereign will of its people its own political, social,
economic and cultural systems, without interference from any other state or
non-state actor.” The resolution passed with 23 votes in favor, 16 against and
8 abstentions (United Nations Digital Library, 2020). Two years later 69
countries introduced a statement to the HRC which read “Xinjiang, Hong Kong and
Tibet related issues are China’s internal affairs. We oppose politicization of
human rights and double standards, or interference in China’s internal affairs
under the pretext of human rights.” All 69 sponsors, except for Russia,
belonged to the Global South (Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of
China, 2022).
Commercial Relations. China
and Global South countries also converge in their positions on economic
development and international commerce. Their stances run counter to those of
the U.S. and its Western allies on a number of key issues: the view that
intellectual property rights should be flexibly interpreted and should not
override (1) food security, the environment and public health (as in the case
of the COVID pandemic); (2) proposals to reform the UN and the World Trade
Organization to reflect the needs of nations of the Global South and provide
them with “Special Differential Treatment” (SDT), including reduced obligations
and longer transition periods for implementation; (3) the position of China
(along with other BRICS nations and the Global South in general) that “fair
trade” should take into account asymmetries between nations; (4) China’s characterization
of U.S. agricultural subsidies as examples of “rampant” protectionism (a
position strongly echoed throughout the Global South); and (5) the view that
the U.S has over the years abandoned international rules, culminating in
Trump’s unilateral tariffs.
How
Unique a Juncture?
More than in any other region, China's
inroads in Latin America prior to Trump II clearly demonstrated its capacity to
outperform U.S. capitalism. These gains were made in spite of (in the words of a
Department of Defense study) Beijing’s “implicit recognition of the region as a
US ‘sphere of influence’” (Ellis, 2013: 135-136).
There is a useful parallel dating back to
the 1950s. The concept of peaceful coexistence embraced by Nikita Khrushchev
and his commonly misquoted statement "We will bury you" were
predicated on the assumption that socialism would eventually triumph due to its
superiority in the economic sphere. This vision proved faulty, partly because
the U.S.-promoted arms race forced the Soviets to prioritize national security
over economic goals, as was undoubtedly the strategy of the Reagan
administration.
Now history is repeating itself, despite all
the differences between the USSR then and China today. Washington's current
militarist strategy, which is designed to keep China out of the hemisphere,
preempts the possibility of friendly economic competition between the two superpowers.
Just as the Soviet post-war production surge lent credibility to Khrushchev’s
claim of socialism’s superiority, China’s advances in Latin America are
similarly revealing. They were made possible by a dynamic economy and a state with
the capacity to mobilize resources in pursuit of economic and political
interests abroad.
Conservative and right-wing think tanks
delight at the prospect that Latin America’s ascendant New Right will play a
lead role in driving China out of the hemisphere. The Wilson Center took
satisfaction in observing that China is “increasingly worried about the United
States’ resurgent influence in the region” (Filipetti, 2026). But this optimism
ignores the Chinese resilience reinforced by the positions of center-rightists like
Macri as well as the tendency of the New Right once in power to set aside its anti-China
rhetoric. But equally or more important is the staying power of the Latin
American Left and the popular resistance against neoliberalism and Trump’s
policies. For instance, the Left in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, where it
historically occupied a marginal position electorally, has emerged as the
second major political force, coming close to winning recent presidential
elections. And the presidential candidate belonging to Chile’s Communist Party
received 42 percent of the vote in 2025, in a country where it was always the
largest Communist party in the region but never obtained more than 20 percent
in elections. No less important is the popular resistance to neoliberalism and
imperialism that recently nearly paralyzed Bolivia and dealt a resounding
defeat to the referendum proposal to reopen the U.S. military base in Mantra. Nothwithstanding
Beijing’s commitment to an ideologically neutral foreign policy, these
political developments will ultimately be crucial in determining Washington’s
success in rolling back China’s influence in the hemisphere.
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Steve
Ellner is a retired professor of the Universidad de Oriente
in Venezuela where he lived for over 40 years and is currently Associate
Managing Editor of Latin American Perspectives. He is the author and
editor of over a dozen books on Latin American politics and history including
his co-edited Latin American Social Movements and Progressive Governments: Creative Tensions between Resistance and
Convergence (2023). In
2018 he spoke in over twenty cities in the U.S. and Canada as part of a
Venezuelan solidarity tour.
ORCID:
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9969-3350
[1]. Jeff Smith
(2018) of The Heritage Foundation argues that for Beijing, China’s “excess
capacity problem” has become (in the words of China analyst Peter Cai) ‘“the
sword of Damocles hanging over its head.’”
[2]. The statistic
includes vaccines distributed by the World Health Organization-sponsored COVAX
(Vadlamannati and Jung, 2023: 69).
posted by Steve Ellner @ 1:31 PM
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