Playing Both Sides: How Latin American Leaders Are Exploiting the US-China Rivalry

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Latin America has long been a battleground for so-called ‘Great Powers’. The United States (U.S.) has been the most prominent exponent of such a strategy since at least 1823 with the Monroe Doctrine. This continued in the Cold War context, with the Soviet Union becoming the biggest challenge to U.S. hegemony in the region, in the ideological battle over communism. In today’s setting, whilst the Cold War paradigm and the Soviet Union no longer exist, Latin America is still considered fertile ground for both ‘new’ and ‘old’ global players in creating their own sphere of influence.

China and the US in Latin America: Polar Opposites

 While the U.S. is still present in the region, its aims have shifted from a clear anti-communist policy into a uniquely personal, partisan and volatile Trumpian approach. Trump’s ideological alignment with right-wing Latin American governments has been clear since his first term. For instance, his close collaboration with the deeply conservative Brazilian government of Jair Bolsonaro was driven by their shared objectives in fighting against “gender ideology or the politically correct attitudes and against fake news”.  In his second term, Trump has gone even further, adding a ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine in his ‘America First’ foreign policy to Latin America. Seeking to reassert American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere through whatever means necessary, ensuring that ‘American people—not foreign nations nor globalist institutions—will always control their own destiny in our hemisphere’.

In this regard, I contend that the left-wing governments of both the Brazilian government of Lula da Silva in Brazil and Gustavo Petro’s government in Colombia, despite occupying markedly different positions in the regional power hierarchy, have sought to form other international alliances in the face of Trump’s neo-imperialist vision of the US’ role in Latin America. With this understanding, as Trump entered his second term, a clear pattern has become apparent in which Latin American leaders have sought to negate the dangers of Trump by pre-emptively securing agreements with other global actors. In this sense, in deploying this hedging pattern, Latin American leaders are underscoring their own agency in pushing back against U.S. intervention.

Who are Lula and Petro turning to as a viable alternative to Trump’s America? Enter into the fray, China and Xi Jinping’s Communist Party. Replacing the Soviet Union as America’s biggest rival for regional primacy in Latin America.

China’s approach, in contrast to Trump’s, is ideologically agnostic. Taking a pragmatic view that explicitly focuses on increasing trade and infrastructural ties across the region, China engages with an eclectic mix of Latin American countries across the political spectrum. The centrepiece is their ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI), commonly known as the ‘Chinese Marshall Plan’. Stemming directly from Xi Jinping’s ascension in 2013, the BRI seeks to integrate Chinese communication and investment networks with other countries. As seen in the Chinese government’s 2016 white paper ‘China’s Policy Paper on Latin America and the Caribbean’, it has increasingly grown to appreciate the strategic importance of Latin America and building ‘strategic’ ties through BRI agreements. As recently as May 2025, in a Beijing summit hosted for Latin American and Caribbean leaders, Xi Jinping announced a $9 billion investment credit line for the region.

Of course, Chinese motivations in developing these economic and diplomatic ties are hardly benevolent. While not explicitly requiring it, they expect members of the BRI to align with Chinese interests on key geopolitical issues, such as the ‘One China Policy’. For example, in January 2022, Nicaragua severed all diplomatic ties with Taiwan, one month after joining the BRI. Additionally, in the Latin American context, it is clear that China is interested in extracting key resources, such as copper and petroleum oil, for its own industrial development.

Latin American leaders are conscious of such self-serving aims but, as this article will demonstrate, view engagement with China through the BRI as a necessary strategic bulwark against Trump’s neo-imperialism.

Lula and Petro’s Hedging Strategy

In November 2024, Lula held a summit with Xi Jinping in Brasília, in which approximately 40 agreements were signed relating to trade, environmental protection and technology. It is important to note, though, that despite encouragement from China, Brazil did not formally join the BRI, instead opting to commit to establishing ‘synergies’ within its framework. In essence, ensuring Chinese investment suited Brazil’s own domestic agenda, without being formally tied into any wider Chinese Latin American agenda. This is partially down to the vast size of the Brazilian economy that dwarfs the rest of Latin America and its pre-existing position as China’s largest trading partner in Latin America, meaning that it does not need to be a full BRI member.  Moreover, though, it is representative of the fact that, despite distancing Brazil from American dependency in the era of Trump, Lula still aims to maintain Brazilian autonomy and flexibility on the international stage. Nonetheless, the mutually beneficial result of a Brazilian and Chinese partnership was evident in Lula’s Beijing visit in May of 2025, in which both leaders signed off on a $4.8 billion investment by Chinese companies in Brazil’s energy, automotive and food industries.

Petro and Colombia, on the other hand, made the decision to formally join China’s BRI initiative in May 2025. This is indicative of Colombia’s relatively weaker position economically to Brazil, but also of its $14 billion dollar trade deficit with China. As such, by joining the BRI, Colombia hopes to boost its exports to China in products such as shrimp, tuna and cacao, aiming to reduce the deficit. Yet to frame such a decision as one of economic pragmatism would be misplaced. Petro, since the beginning of his Presidency in 2022, has consistently emphasised his desire to ‘diversify Colombia’s foreign partnerships’ and ‘reduce dependence on the U.S’ upon Trump’s return to the White House. This is despite the fact that the US is Colombia’s largest trading partner and despite criticism from those within Colombia that he could be putting this relationship at risk.

Nevertheless, despite significant differences in their geopolitical capital and nature of relationships with the US and China, both Colombia and Brazil are pursuing hedging strategies with the same underlying logic of strategic elasticity: avoiding exclusive alignments with either superpower.

US Response and Hedging Strategy Success

However, Lula and Pedro’s hedging strategy led to an immediate backlash from the Trump administration. In the Brazilian case, Trump signed an executive order on 30^th July, 2025, raising trade tariffs on Brazil by 50%. Pointing to the alleged ‘witch hunt’ regarding the criminal proceedings against Bolsonaro initiated by Lula’s government. Similarly, in January 2025, Trump threatened Colombia with 25% tariffs over a failure to accept the return of deported migrants from the U.S. In September of the same year, Colombia was decertified as a drug control partner for the first time since 1997, with the US state department citing the “disastrous and ineffective counternarcotics policies” of Petro’s presidency. This in itself was a consequence of Washington’s growing concern with the increased formal ties between Colombia and China following Colombia’s entry into the BRI programme.

As such, the bargaining power they had acquired through their agreements with China enabled Lula and Petro to face American intimidation from a position of strength. In the case of Brazil, the Trump administration backtracked on the tariffs in less than six months. Trump and Lula met at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in October 2025, with Lula describing it as constructive in attempting to find a solution to US tariffs. A month later, Trump issued an executive order that removed 40% levies on Brazilian exports such as beef and coffee. As Fortune Magazine reported, this was reflective of Lula’s belief that Trump’s intimidation tactics lacked any substance behind them. However, it would be reductive to ascribe Lula’s confidence entirely to the fact that he had secured Chinese economic support; after all, the US is heavily reliant on Brazilian exports such as coffee, and the continuation of such tariffs was simply not sustainable. Yet there is no denying that the Chinese connection certainly played a significant role in Trump’s decision to back down.

The Colombian case, on the other hand, is not as straightforward. Colombia yielded to Trump’s demands regarding deported migrants in January, after Trump threatened to impose tariffs. While this may appear to highlight the weaknesses of Colombia’s hedging strategy, Petro’s tactical retreat was an acknowledgement that immigration was a comparatively minor issue. Petro has instead chosen to remain steadfast in refusing to bow to U.S. pressure with respect to his drug policy. His defiant public response to U.S. decertification is emblematic of this, in which he stridently defended his government’s anti-drug policy and vowed to continue its implementation irrespective of US pressure, describing Trump’s actions as one of ‘profound rudeness’.

The timing suggests that Beijing’s support provided strategic cover for Petro: having formalised BRI membership in May, Petro could afford to be steadfast in the face of U.S. decertification, knowing that Washington feared pushing Colombia further into China’s sphere of influence. Pedro’s strategy paid off, considering that such decertification was supposed to be accompanied by aid cuts and further sanctions. However, none of these materialised, and instead, Trump opted for a ‘wait-and-see approach’. 

This illustrates that, in small-scale disputes, the U.S. can still exert its regional influence. Yet in areas of fundamental importance, where Brazil or Colombia’s national interests are threatened, with China as a diplomatic and economic ally, the U.S.’s regional influence wanes.

Conclusion

Ultimately, Latin American leaders have transformed the U.S-China competition within the region into a ‘buyer’s market’. The anticipatory ‘hedging’ of Lula and Petro is emblematic of this. Emphasising their sophisticated use of statecraft and their own agency, they have endeavoured to protect themselves against U.S. power through greater closeness with China, whilst still maintaining the autonomy of their own respective nations.

However, considering the Trump administration’s willingness to break international law and to use military force to achieve its desired outcomes, as seen in Venezuela in January 2026, the continued viability of Lula and Pedro’s hedging strategy remains unclear.

Written by James Mahon

Edited by Catalina Pitre