Over the past two decades, China has quietly overtaken the United States as the dominant trading partner in parts of Latin America.
But since taking office for his second term, US President Donald Trump has pushed to reverse China’s advances.
Recommended stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
This includes offensive operations against China’s allies in the region.
The Trump administration has already reportedly revoked U.S. visas from officials from Costa Rica, Panama, and Chile because of their ties to China.
It has also threatened to take back the Panama Canal over suspicions that Chinese agents are operating it. Then, after invading Venezuela and kidnapping President Nicolas Maduro, the United States forced the country to halt oil exports to China.
But on Saturday, President Trump will take a different approach, welcoming Latin American leaders to his Mar-a-Lago mansion for an event called the “America’s Shield” summit.
It remains unclear how he plans to persuade leaders to distance themselves from one of the region’s biggest economic partners.
But experts say the high-level meeting could signal that the U.S. government is willing to put concrete proposals on the table.
Francisco Urdines, an expert on regional relations with China at Chile’s Pontifical Catholic University, said getting meaningful commitments from Latin American leaders will take more than just photo ops and vague promises.
Mr. Urdines, among Mr. Trump’s allies, believes that significant economic incentives are needed.
“What they really want is for the U.S. government to back a political alliance with tangible economic benefits,” he said.
“Strengthening the Donro principle”
The White House has already confirmed that representatives from nearly a dozen countries will participate in the weekend summit.
They include conservative leaders from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Mexico and Brazil, the region’s largest economies, have been significantly left behind. Both are currently led by leftist governments.
In a social media post, the Trump administration characterized the event as a “historic meeting that strengthens the Don Roe Doctrine, the President’s plan to establish American primacy over the Western Hemisphere.”
Part of that strategy includes assembling a coalition of ideological allies in the region.
But rolling back China’s influence in a region that is increasingly dependent on China’s economy will not be easy, said Jimena Sanchez, Andean director at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a U.S.-based research and advocacy group.
Sanchez said the United States is “trying to get countries to agree not to make China a major trading partner, but we can’t really do that at this point.”
“For most countries, China is their first, second or third trading partner.”
After all, China is the world’s second-largest economy and has invested heavily in Latin America through infrastructure projects and huge loans.
The Asian giant has emerged as a top trading partner, particularly in South America, with bilateral trade reaching $518 billion in 2024, a record high for Beijing.
However, the United States remains the largest foreign trading power throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, primarily due to its close relationship with neighboring Mexico.
As of 2024, U.S. imports from Latin America soared to $661 billion, and exports reached $517 billion.
However, Sanchez explained that many countries in the region are not choosing sides, but are trying to find a balance between the two powers.
Still, he added, the United States cannot go into this weekend’s negotiations empty-handed.
“If the United States is going to be very bold in telling countries to cut ties with China, the United States is going to have to offer them something,” Sanchez said.
What’s on the table?
President Trump has already extended economic lifelines to Latin American governments that are politically allied with him.
In Argentina, for example, President Trump announced a $20 billion currency swap in October aimed at increasing the value of the country’s peso.
He also strengthened the country’s agricultural sector by increasing the amount of Argentine beef allowed into the United States, despite opposition from American livestock farmers.
Mr. Trump has primarily linked these economic incentives to continued leadership of political movements that favor him.
The $20 billion exchange, for example, came ahead of a crucial election for Argentina’s President Javier Milei’s right-wing party, which Trump supports.
Isolating China from Latin American resources could also work to Trump’s advantage as he seeks to improve trade terms with China.
Urdines said a show of hemispheric unity could give Trump more leverage when he travels to Beijing in early April to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Next is the perspective of regional security. The United States has expressed particular concern about China’s control of Latin America’s strategic infrastructure and the critical minerals it may develop in the region to strengthen its defense and technological capabilities.
For example, Bolivia, Argentina and Chile are thought to have the world’s largest reserves of lithium, a metal needed for energy storage and rechargeable batteries.
The Trump administration mentioned these threats in its national security strategy released in December.
“Some foreign influences will be difficult to reverse,” the strategy document said, blaming “political alliances between certain Latin American governments and certain foreign actors.”
But President Trump’s security platform nevertheless insisted that Latin American leaders were actively seeking alternatives to China.
“Many governments are attracted to doing business with foreign powers not because they are ideologically aligned with them, but for other reasons, such as lower costs or lower regulatory hurdles,” the document states.
The paper argued that the United States could counter Chinese influence by highlighting the “hidden costs” of a close relationship with China, such as “debt traps” and espionage.
“Aspirations rather than reality”
Henrietta Levin, a senior fellow at the Washington Center for Strategic and International Studies, believes many Latin American countries would prefer greater economic engagement with the United States than with China.
But in many cases, that wasn’t an option.
He pointed to Ecuador’s decision to conclude a free trade agreement (FTA) with China in 2023, following the failure of negotiations for a similar agreement with the United States under President Joe Biden.
Some U.S. politicians opposed the deal, seeing it as a threat to domestic industry. Some urged Biden to veto the measure, citing corruption allegations in the Ecuadorian government.
But critics argued that the resistance movement had brought Ecuador closer to ties with China.
“When Ecuador signed the free trade agreement with China several years ago, Ecuador’s leaders actually made it very clear that they wanted and wanted an FTA with the United States,” Levin said.
“But the United States did not want to negotiate such an agreement, but China did.”
As a result, Ecuador becomes the fifth country in Latin America to sign a free trade agreement with China, following Chile, Peru, Costa Rica and Nicaragua.
For Levin, the question looming over this weekend’s summit is whether the Trump administration will step up and offer an alternative to the economic engagement China has already offered.
Options could include trade deals, financing new developments, and investing on attractive terms.
But without such an offer, President Trump’s ambitions to curb China’s growth in Latin America will face limits, Urdines warns.
“Until the United States shows a willingness to fill the economic space it is asking countries to leave, the retrenchment strategy will remain more aspiration than reality,” Urdines said.
