China is courting Latin America in a challenge to increased U.S. focus on the region under the Trump administration, The New York Times reported Monday.
Chinese President Xi Jinping will host Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Beijing starting Tuesday, along with various leaders from the Caribbean and Latin America, the NYT reported Monday. As the U.S. is making an effort to more closely monitor and advance its policy interests in South and Central America, China is also attempting to make overtures to solidify influence in the region.
“Lula sees China as a partner in rebalancing global power, not just a trade partner but a geopolitical counterweight to U.S. hegemony,”Matias Spektor, professor of politics and international relations at Fundação Getulio Vargas University in Brazil, told the NYT.
The meetings are expected to focus on Latin America’s tentative trade relations with a U.S. more inclined to utilize tariffs to protect its own industry at the expense of other nations.
Lula, an avowed leftist, ousted former right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro in the 2023 presidential election. After Lula took office, Brazilian authorities indicted Bolsonaro on money laundering and criminal association allegations connected to a case involving undeclared diamonds he received in 2019 in Saudi Arabia.
China is Brazil’s biggest export customer, sending roughly $106 billion of goods to China in 2023, according to Observatory for Economic Complexity (OEC) data. Brazil is also part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a massive infrastructure project that some have criticized as debt trap diplomacy.
Lula is not the only high-profile South American leader meeting with Xi.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro will also be in attendance, according to Chinese media outlet CGTN.
Petro, elected in 2022, also espouses left-wing views, landed himself in hot water with the U.S. after he initially refused to take in a plane of Colombian nationals illegally in the U.S. Just an hour after President Donald Trump instituted retaliatory tariffs in response, Petro backed down and let the planes land.
China has been a lucrative trading partner for Latin America overall, netting a total of $519 billion in total goods exchanged, according to a NYT translation of Chinese trade data. However, Latin America remains largely protectionist of its industry and more often than not aligns itself with the U.S., Ryan Berg, director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told the NYT.
“These are countries that have a history of protectionism already and are interested in protecting local jobs and local industries,” Berg told the NYT. “Even though many countries like Brazil have good relationships with China, they have nevertheless moved almost in parallel with the United States to protect certain industries out of fear that they could become dumping grounds for, say, Chinese steel and aluminum.”
Xi is confident that he can keep Latin America in line with lucrative trade relations, even as Secretary of State Marco Rubio has made Latin America a priority in foreign policy, departing from past administrations’ relative disinterest in the region, according to the NYT. Early into the new administration, Rubio made a slew of visits to Latin American and Caribbean nations to shore up U.S. support while achieving many policy objectives along the way.
The State Department and the Brazilian Embassy did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment. The Chinese embassy referred the DCNF to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ briefing on Monday.
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