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

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[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).