Trump administration wants to confront China in Latin America

Marco Rubio will discover that it is difficult to beat a China that dominates lithium, copper and agribusiness in the region, but does not export its ideology

Since its founding by landowners in 1866, the Argentine Rural Society – motto “Cultivating the Soil is Serving the Nation” – has been a powerful ally of governments on the right and a frightening enemy of the left. The society’s Buenos Aires campus, home to a major annual agricultural fair, dominates a block in the heart of the capital. Introducing The Telegram for a chat about geopolitics, society authorities deplore decades of economic mismanagement by left-leaning populist governments, which caused inflation to soar and the Argentine currency to sink. On your way out, you are shown some of the society’s historical treasures, including a carved armchair used by the late Pope John Paul II.

However, when asked about the People’s Republic of China, they purr. “China is a bottomless barrel. Whatever you can offer, they will accept”, says Nicolás Pino, president of the society. He describes increasing exports to China of Argentine soybeans, frozen beef, semen from prize bulls and other agricultural products worth billions of dollars. Latin American agricultural barons often sell to state agencies, guided by orders to improve Chinese food security and self-sufficiency issued by Communist Party leaders.

If the Rural Society has grievances, they involve not the political leanings of Chinese officials, but their single-minded approach to commerce. When selling to Europeans, once the price and quality of exports have been established, “trade flows”, says Pino. In contrast, Chinese importers recently decided that they were paying too much for beef and unilaterally reduced the price by more than two-thirds, “and not just for future sales, but for beef that was already at sea”. Unfortunately, lower prices have created new dangers for Argentina, Brazil and other Latin American countries that sell millions of tons of meat to China every year. In the final days of 2024, Chinese regulators announced an investigation into imported beef prices at the request of hard-pressed domestic producers.

Still, cattle barons and other conservative interests consider China an invaluable partner. In interviews with politicians, industry chiefs and diplomats across Latin America, there is praise for China’s business-friendly “pragmatism.” This was not always a given.

When China first showed serious interest in Latin America a generation ago, it caused alarm in Washington and other Western capitals by channeling some of its largest investments and loans to left-wing and anti-American regimes, notably in Venezuela. In the years that followed, prominent conservatives continued to worry about the collusion of the West’s enemies in the Global South.

In late 2023, Marco Rubio, a Republican senator from Florida, demanded that President Joe Biden impose sanctions on a left-wing former Argentine president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Noting Kirchner’s corruption conviction, Rubio accused her of allowing “malign actors like China and Iran to deepen their corrupt influence in a critical U.S. ally, Argentina.” He pointed in particular to “nebulous agreements for public works contracts that compromise the security of the United States and Argentina.”

In particular, Rubio pointed to a satellite tracking radar station built by China in a remote Argentine desert, operated by a branch of the People’s Liberation Army.

Rubio, a tough Cuban-American conservative, will soon present his position in person to Latin American leaders as he is President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of state. He has friends across the region, including in Argentina, whose libertarian president, Javier Milei, campaigned for office in 2023 by threatening to break ties with China’s government, saying: “I don’t make pacts with communists.”

Milei changed his mind as president, declaring that the Chinese are “a very interesting partner; They ask for nothing, except that they should not be disturbed.” Shortly after his victory, Chinese envoys raised the rhetoric of Milei’s campaign, say well-informed Argentines. But they expressed understanding of its disastrous legacy, involving vast foreign debts and a destroyed domestic economy, and declared that China would not be “an obstacle to Argentina’s recovery.” In June 2024, China extended a currency swap worth billions of dollars for another two years, giving Argentina’s foreign exchange reserves some room for maneuver.

For China, friends come and go, interests are lasting

Local bigwigs are not surprised, noting that China’s investments increased after a US-educated, pro-business centrist, Mauricio Macri, defeated Kirchner to become president of Argentina from 2015 to 2019. China’s interests in Latin America are unquestionably strategic, says Carlos Ruckauf, a former vice president and foreign minister of Argentina. He points to Chancay, a Chinese-built and controlled port in Peru that will be the largest and deepest on South America’s Pacific coast. He acknowledges China’s warm ties with the Kirchners, who have praised China’s governance.

But “with China, ideology is clearly second,” he says. “We are lithium, copper and food for them.” The challenge for the continent is to strike trade deals with China that do not cross America’s red lines, he suggests. Allowing Chinese companies to enter telecommunications networks “could be a red line.” Chinese ambitions to develop a port near Antarctica were “terrible” for America, he says. China’s space peering radar station is a “very difficult” problem because it is governed by a bilateral treaty.

Bigwigs from several Latin American countries have the same message for the Trump team. To compete with China, America must offer alternatives. In Chile, the Biden administration scored a victory when a Chinese bid to build an undersea internet cable from Chile to Asia was defeated by a Western consortium that included Google. Trump’s first presidency saw many threats and lectures directed at his southern neighbors. To counter China’s influence, “The Art of the Deal” would be a better guide.

With information from The Economist*