Trump’s war on China in Latin America
An abridged version of this article was first published in Jacobin.
US President Donald Trump’s threats to take over the Panama Canal, convert Canada into the 51st state and purchase Greenland may not be as ludicrous as they seemed. The proposals, albeit unachievable, lay the groundwork for a more “rational” strategy of targeting China (not so much Russia) and singling out real adversaries (as opposed to Canada and Panama), which include Cuba and Venezuela, with Bolivia not far behind. The strategy is what James Carafano of the Heritage Foundation calls the “Rejuvenation of the Monroe Doctrine,” which, after all, in its day encompassed Canada and Greenland in addition to Latin America.
Trump’s choice of anti-Cuba zealot Marco Rubio as secretary of state reinforces the perception that the Trump administration’s foreign policy will pay special attention to Latin America and that Latin American policy will prioritise two enemies: China and the continent's leftist governments. Carafano calls the strategy “a pivot to Latin America.”
Political analyst Juan Gabriel Tokatlian writing in Americas Quarterly was more specific. After citing Trump’s plans for military action against Mexico, Cuba and Venezuela in his first administration, Tokatlian reasons “a second Trump White House may well lack some of the more rational voices that averted more rash actions the first time around.”
Honouring the Monroe Doctrine
The pundits are at odds as to whether Trump was fantasising and hallucinating when he made all three threats or was acting out his “Art of the Deal” strategy of intimidation to extract concessions. But both interpretations miss the broader context which suggests that a larger strategy of US interventionism is on the table.
The Panama threat is a reminder that currents on the right and within the Republican Party still denounce the “canal giveaway.” Ronald Reagan warned against it in his attempt to secure the Republican presidential nomination in 1976 and again raised the issue in his successful bid for the presidency four years later. Two decades later in the lead-up to the turning over of the canal, a prominent journalist, Thomas DeFrank, alleged that Panamanians were incapable of maintaining standards of efficiency. He concluded that once the US pulled out, Panamanians would “suffer more economic woes, let the canal languish and decline, and prove Ronald Reagan a prophet.”
The “Reagan Doctrine,” which justified US intervention in Nicaragua, El Salvador and elsewhere on grounds of combating Soviet influence, was an update to the Monroe Doctrine. Subsequently, in 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry declared “the era of the Monroe Doctrine is over,” though he did not renounce US interventionism, only unilateral intervention. The neocons and the Republican right rejected even this bland position.
The “rejuvenated” Monroe Doctrine promises to direct attention at practical targets south of the border, as the US invasions of Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989 clearly demonstrated. Both were quick, “clean” operations, in stark contrast with the drawn-out wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Carafano of the Heritage Foundation — which does much of Trump’s strategising — writes that a revived Monroe Doctrine “would comprise partnerships between the US and like-minded nations in the region that share common goals, such as mitigating the influence of Russia, China and Iran.” As for the enemy closer to home, Carafano singles out the Sao Paulo Forum consisting of leftist governments and movements in Latin America. Trump was even more specific when he announced that Venezuela was one “of the hottest spots around the world” that his Presidential Envoy for Special Missions Richard Allen Grenell would be dealing with.
Trump’s remarks on the Panama Canal, Canada and Greenland may foreshadow forceful, if not military, actions to achieve regime change against the real adversaries. Trump holds a special grudge against Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. He may want a second chance to topple Maduro after the first chance, beginning with the recognition of the parallel government of the inept Juan Guaidó in 2019, turned out to be such a fiasco. The same can be said for Rubio who at the time called on the Venezuelan military to throw its allegiance behind Guaidó and added that US military intervention was an option. The well-publicised questioning of the validity of the Venezuelan presidential elections of last July 28 provides Trump and Rubio a golden opportunity.
The new right that has emerged in the 21st century, with Trump as its most visible figure, is more fixated on combating Communists and leftists such as Maduro than were conservatives of the prior years following the end of the Cold War. And Latin America is the only region in the world where leftist governments abound in the form of the so-called “Pink Tide” (Nicolas Maduro, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Gustavo Petro, Claudia Sheinbaum, etc). Those nations are in the crosshairs of Trump and his close allies.
Elon Musk is a prime example. Having assimilated the new right’s McCarthyism (which Trump inherited from Roy Cohen), Musk tweeted “Kamala vows to be a communist dictator.” In the four days following Venezuela’s July 28 elections, he wrote more than 500 messages about Venezuela, one of which was a tweet that read “shame on dictator Maduro.” Musk also applauded the right-wing coup against Evo Morales in 2019 and after Morales’ party returned to power in Bolivia, he brazenly warned: “We will coup whoever we want.”
The McCarthyite new right targets the more leftist Pink Tide leaders such as those of Venezuela and Cuba, but it is not letting moderate ones such as Lula off the hook. Rubio calls Lula Brazil’s a “far-left leader,” while Musk has expressed certainty that he will not be reelected in 2026. Some analysts have raised the possibility that Trump will slap the Lula government with tariffs and sanctions to support the return to power of Jair Bolsonaro and the Brazilian far right.
Since its initial formulation, the Monroe Doctrine has been given different readings. While Monroe’s principal message in 1823 has been summarised as “America for the Americans,” Latin Americans recalled the Monroe Doctrine’s 200-year legacy of countless US interventions. Viewing it from a different perspective, Trump invokes the Monroe Doctrine as a warning to China to stay clear of the US’s hemisphere.
The China target
Trump’s real target in all three threats was China. Trump posted the Panama canal “was solely for Panama to manage, not China,” and “we would and will NEVER let it fall into the wrong hands!” In reality, a Hong Kong-based company is administering two of Panama’s five ports, a far cry from Trump’s claim that Chinese soldiers are operating the canal.
Trump made his case for the annexation of the Panama Canal, Canada and Greenland (a gateway to the Arctic) by arguing for the need to block China’s growing presence in the hemisphere. Trump’s threat to annex the territory of a sovereign nation says a lot about the bellicose mentality of the US president. It is also a reflection of the desperation of segments of the US ruling class in the face of the nation’s declining economic, but not military, power. The real reason why Trump is targeting China, while he plays peacemaker between Russia and Ukraine, is economic.
In the 21st century, China’s investment in and trade with Latin America have increased exponentially. China has now surpassed the US as South America’s top trading partner. Some economists predict that the net value of trade, which in 2022 was valued at $450 billion, will exceed $700 billion by 2035.
When it comes to Washington’s anti-China rhetoric, competition with the U.S. on the economic front receives less attention than it merits. If ever the “it’s the economy stupid” statement was apropos, it is in the case of China’s challenge to US hegemony.
The Heritage Foundation’s 38,000-word “Plan for Countering China,” enumerates an endless number of non-economic threats posed by China. Many of the threats put the spotlight on Latin America due to its proximity. For example: “China’s role in global drug trafficking, exploiting instability in the U.S. and Latin America caused by illegal migration… The U.S. government should close loopholes in immigration law and policy that China is exploiting.”
Other areas of concern attributed to China and originating largely from Latin America include “transnational criminal activity,” “war drills” carried out in Latin America, and China’s Cuban-based espionage. In addition, in a conversation with the Chinese government, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen raised concerns regarding that nation’s alleged sponsorship of “malicious cyber activities”.
Particularly unfounded is the allegation that China seeks to export autocracy, or, in the words of then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, “validate its authoritarian system and spread its reach.”
Washington’s discourse on China’s threat to democracy resonates among the far right in Latin America. Leopoldo López, for a long time “our man in Caracas” on the far right of the political spectrum, testified before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 2023 that “autocrats” such as Maduro and “Chinese communists,” were threatening Venezuelan democracy, with Russia and China “at the center of [an] autocratic network.”
Yet there is little evidence to back up Pompeo’s and López’s accusations. China is hardly preaching the virtues of authoritarian rule. In fact, Beijing’s repetition of the phrase “socialism with Chinese characteristics” indicates how little interested it is in exporting a model, at least in comparison to Moscow throughout the history of the Soviet Union.
Jeffrey Sachs has made the point clearly that the US-China clash is not really about ideology, but rather economic growth: “Then we have the tensions with China. This is blamed on China, but it's actually an American policy that began under former President Barack Obama because China's success triggered every American hegemonic antibody that says China's becoming too big and powerful.”
If economic rivalry is the real source of worry in Washington, then China is clearly a larger concern than Russia. Carafano notes: “There are persistent calls in the U.S. to pivot to Asia and leave Russia as Europe’s problem. Others suggest an accommodation with Moscow to undercut relations between Russia and China.”
The renowned international relations scholar John Mearsheimer is the foremost advocate of the position that the Chinese threat to the US is second to none. For Mearsheimer, ideology is not at play, but rather China’s unanticipated, rapid economic growth. He argues “it would be a mistake to portray China as an ideological menace today,” and adds contemporary China “is best understood as an authoritarian state that embraces capitalism. Americans should wish that China were communist; then it would have a lethargic economy.”
The right versus Latin America’s economic elite
As in the US, powerful economic groups in Latin America support the far-right, but their interests and viewpoints do not always coincide. This is the case with agro and other business sectors that stand a lot to lose from the Latin American right’s hostility toward China, which jeopardises markets and the influx of investments. Indeed, local business groups have come into conflict with right-wing politicians and often find themselves at odds with Washington’s anti-China campaign.
True to form, the Latin American right along with Washington has put up resistance to initiatives promoting cooperation with China. For instance, the decision of Panamanian president Juan Carlos Varela to sever diplomatic relations with Taiwan and extend them to Beijing in 2017 was not free of controversy. The Trump administration reacted by withdrawing its ambassador in protest leading Varela to demand “respect ... just as we respect the sovereign decisions of other countries.” This was followed by a scandal known as “VarelaLeaks,” involving an alleged $142 million in bribe money from mainland China to secure the deal. China adamantly denied the charge.
Upon reaching power, far-right leaders such as Bolsonaro and Argentine president Javier Milei could not have been nastier in their language regarding China. In Bolsonaro’s first year in office, for instance, his foreign affairs minister Ernesto Araújo declared that Brazil will not “sell its soul” to “export iron ore and soy” to Communist China. But in both cases, pressure from economic groups resulted in surprising turnabouts.
Milei, for his part, at first thwarted the implementation of agreements with Beijing and called its leaders “murderers” and “thieves,” but then opted for pragmatism. After an exceptionally friendly encounter with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 Summit in Rio last November, a currency swap deal worth billions of dollars was resumed.
All this indicates that the Trump administration will probably face resistance to its anti-China campaign in Latin America from an unexpected source, namely local business interests.
A Cold War rerun?
The Heritage Foundation’s foreign policy statement designed for a second Trump presidency is titled Winning the New Cold War: A Plan for Countering China. The title is deceptive. The US-China rivalry lacks the basic ideological dimension of the former Cold War, which consisted of a confrontation between two distinct political-economic systems, both of which were fervently defended as superior dogmas.
Furthermore, China does not practice the “internationalism” that characterised the Soviet Union, which counted on the loyalty of Communist Parties throughout the world. Indeed, prominent leftists have criticised Beijing’s alleged lack of solidarity with left-wing movements and governments elsewhere.
In addition, China’s model consists of over 400 billionaires (according to Forbes), even while the new right’s discourse demonises Chinese Communism. Scratching beneath the surface, the new narrative blames China and its economic expansion, partly driven by Chinese capitalists, for the inroads of the Latin American left. The twisted logic recalls Hitler’s vitriolic attacks on Jewish capitalists for being responsible for the advance of Communism.
Similarly, the Heritage Foundation calls out Latin American Pink Tide governments for “opening the region to China.” Carafano points to the leftist leaders of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia, whose parties belong to the Sao Paulo Forum, for their nations’ “expanding relations” with China, Russia and Iran.
In the spirit of conspiracy theory, Carafano writes: “The [Sao Paulo] Forum formulates increasingly active and aggressive policies to undermine pro-U.S. regimes in the region and accepts transnational crime, including networks from the Middle East, as a helpful tool for destabilization.” In addition to the failure of the Forum’s detractors to present concrete evidence linking the group to crime and terrorism, its heterogeneity, which includes grassroots labour, ethnic and environmental movement as well as ones inspired by the Catholic Church, clearly puts the lie to the claim.
The Heritage Foundation’s Mike Gonzalez critically writes on the Forum’s 2023 meeting in Brasilia, Brazil. Gonzalez expresses scepticism of the Forum’s opening declaration which praised China for its “defence of the principles of International Law, in particular the no intromission in the internal affairs of Latin American nations.” Indeed, China adheres to this principle in its opposition to Washington-imposed sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela and other regime change attempts.
The Pink Tide’s support for China’s position on national sovereignty is a far cry from imitating the Chinese model, as the new right claims. The Pink Tide’s opposition to interventionism and support for a “multi-polar world” is more in line with “Third Worldism” than any kind of socialist or Communist dogma. That said, market socialism as practiced in China has influenced Pink Tide leaders such as Maduro to pursue “friendly relations with private capital.”
Economic rivalry, not ideological differences nor plain maliciousness, is the essence of the confrontation between the US and China in Latin America. The Heritage Foundation and the rest of the new right are doing Washington policymakers a disservice by drawing attention to secondary issues, if not bogus ones, in its efforts to highlight the danger posed by China-Latin American relations.
The real issue is China’s increasing economic ties in the region including huge investments in the form of the Belt and Road Initiative for ambitious infrastructure projects, which 22 Latin American Caribbean nations have signed on to.
President Joe Biden attempted to counter the Belt and Road Initiative with his “Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity,” which he launched at the Summit of the Americas in 2022. He called it a “new and ambitious economic agenda.” The think tank Council on Foreign Relations characterised Biden’s investments to counter the Belt and Road Initiative as paltry.
Under Trump, the prospects are likely to be worse. In his recent Americas Quarterly article forecasting the trends of Trump’s second administration, Tokatlian wrote “if recent history is any guide, Washington is unlikely to offer much of an alternative when it comes to investments or help with infrastructure.” If this is the case, the US will be in no position to win the hearts and minds of Latin Americans. If the Chinese do, it will be because of their vibrant economy, not because of the export of ideology.
Steve Ellner is an Associate Managing Editor of Latin American Perspectives and a retired professor at the Universidad de Oriente in Venezuela, where he lived for over 40 years. His latest book is his co-edited Latin American Social Movements and Progressive Governments: Creative Tensions Between Resistance and Convergence (2022).