Since the Trump administration assumed office for a second term, it has made substantial adjustments to the previous administration’s foreign strategy, seeking to shape a strategic posture in the future characterized by “a stable North American periphery and full-strength containment and suppression of China.” Against this backdrop, on the one hand, Latin America may face greater strategic pressure from the United States. On the other hand, it may also gain opportunities by leveraging the elevation of its strategic position to further strengthen its strategic autonomy. In the process of advancing China–Latin America relations, China can play a more constructive role in promoting the comprehensive development of Latin American countries precisely by forming a sharp contrast with the United States. 

(1) The United States: “Retrenchment” or “Adjustment”

Since the 2024 U.S. presidential election, the foreign-strategy positions that the Trump team has prominently espoused have appeared to be saturated with a tone of “retrenchment.” First, they proclaimed that “the Russia–Ukraine conflict could be ended within 24 hours.” Second, they repeatedly demanded that European and Asia-Pacific allies increase their military spending, even threatening to “withdraw from NATO.” Third, they pledged to end conflicts in the Middle East. After the Trump administration took office in January 2025, U.S. foreign policy toward key regions around the world outside the Americas did indeed exhibit certain characteristics of “letting things drift” and “passing the buck.” For a time, the notion of “U.S. strategic retrenchment” became a major issue of concern within both policy and academic circles. 

However, “retrenchment” in the true strategic sense—or, put differently, the proactive abandonment of dominance over certain key geostrategic regions out of fear of bearing obligations—cannot constitute a genuine strategic option for the United States. U.S.-style hegemony differs from British-style hegemony. The former relies not only on military power but also simultaneously employs a range of tools, including the dollar system, cultural penetration, and international institutions, to sustain the United States’ advantageous position within the international order. These hegemonic tools themselves possess a certain stickiness with respect to other regions—simultaneous with “domination,” a “parasitic” effect also emerges. In other words, under conditions of “flesh and blood ties,” forcible separation amounts to self-destruction. British-style hegemony, which merely sought to extract commercial benefits from the balance of power, had two options: “maintaining hegemony” and “retreating back to Europe.” By contrast, U.S.-style hegemony, which has long pursued comprehensive and deep control, faces two options: “domination” or “death.” In practice, a “middle path” of retreating to the status of a regional power simply does not exist. 

The appearance of “retrenchment” arises precisely because the Trump administration’s strategic thinking on “adjustment” differs fundamentally from the foreign strategies of the Bush, Obama, and Biden administrations. First, Trump seeks to “dismantle” the international community rather than to “rely on” it. The international community signifies shared interests, political consensus, and institutional design. Trump may believe that, since the United States is the country with the greatest comprehensive national strength in the world, it is difficult for it to share common interests and consensus with other countries. Therefore, existing international institutions and international organizations that possess binding force can only constrain the United States from fully leveraging its advantages. For the United States, the most advantageous approach is precisely to dismantle the international community, deny shared interests, break political consensus, and withdraw from institutional constraints, so that it can then rely on power to gain strategic initiative in numerous “one-on-one” bilateral games. Second, the Trump administration seeks to return to the role of an “offshore balancer” rather than to pursue the unlimited deepening of control over other regions. Requiring allies and partners to assume greater regional security obligations will, to be sure, worsen U.S. relations with these countries and regions in the short term. However, over the past several decades, the United States and these countries and regions have formed an unbreakable relationship of mutual dependence. The allies’ heightened security dependence on the United States has, in fact, provided the Trump administration with a “security guardrail” for reshaping these relationships. Trump aims to adjust the extremely high-cost logic of “control” toward a relatively lower cost logic of “offshore balancing,” acting as a regulator rather than a participant between Russia and Europe, between China and Japan, and between Israel and Palestine. Viewed in terms of these two adjustments, the Trump administration’s foreign strategy can be summed up in a single sentence: The methods have been adjusted, but the objectives remain unchanged; expansion or pause is possible, but retrenchment is impossible. 

(2) Latin America: “Control” or “Autonomy”

Starting from the objective of properly playing the role of an “offshore balancer,” the Trump administration will inevitably seek to strengthen control over surrounding regions, so as to prevent “problems from emerging close at hand” while it applies leverage on the Eurasian continent. Against this backdrop, the interaction and superposition of the United States’ 200-year strategic tradition of seeking to control Latin America and the Trump administration’s concrete strategic needs mean that the United States is bound to incline toward further transforming surrounding regions, chiefly Latin America, from a “backyard” into an “internal courtyard.” Before and after Trump’s return to office, a series of seemingly bizarre initiatives—including annexing Canada, purchasing Greenland, “reclaiming” the Panama Canal, renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America,” and imposing additional tariffs on Latin American countries—reflect probing pressure by the Trump administration aimed at seeking deep control over the “backyard.” Although U.S. offensive moves have eased somewhat after encountering resistance from various countries, as long as the strategic thinking remains unchanged, it is still to be expected that the United States will return in the future with more “outlandish ideas,” seeking opportunities to reassert control over Latin American countries from additional angles. Issues such as illegal immigration, drug trafficking, trade tariffs, and right-wing politics may all become strategic levers through which the Trump administration penetrates surrounding regions and even seeks “territorial expansion.” In particular, with the backing of the Trump administration, right-wing conservative forces across Latin American countries are likely to rise on a broad scale, sharpening confrontation between the left and the right. This will undoubtedly create more conditions for the intervention of external forces. Under combined internal and external agitation, the shadow of the Monroe Doctrine once again looms over Latin America. 

However, “where there is oppression, there is resistance,” and the Trump administration’s high-pressure tactics constitute a “double-edged sword” for Latin American countries’ struggle against external control. During the period when the Biden administration was in office, the United States adopted flexible strategies toward Latin American countries on the whole, with the objective of incorporating Latin America into U.S. economic circulation. The “nearshoring” and “friend-shoring” policies at one point won the support of countries such as Brazil and Mexico. U.S. investment in science and technology and finance in Latin America increased, and U.S.–Latin America supply chains were strengthened. The Trump administration not only squandered the economic “legacy” that the Biden administration had built in Latin America, but also, beyond economic and social issues, stimulated a sense of collective identity among Latin American countries and a willingness to engage in united resistance. Against the backdrop of countries such as Panama, Colombia, Brazil, and Mexico each adopting measures in different fields to resist the United States, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) adopted the Tegucigalpa Declaration at its Ninth Summit in 2025. This document announced opposition to unilateral coercive measures that violate international law, including restrictive measures that obstruct international trade, and reaffirmed willingness to continue political dialogue and deepen the cooperative ties between the CELAC and other countries and regional groupings.¹ Against the backdrop of economic globalization, attempts by the United States in the 21st century to recreate the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine have very limited feasibility. The Trump administration’s hardline measures have already strongly prompted Latin American countries to adopt a “bottom-line mindset” and to seek more alternatives to cooperation with the United States. In the next stage, Latin American countries may generally accelerate efforts to upgrade cooperation with the European Union and China, among other parties. 

(3) China: “Competitive Victory” or “Construction”

Against the backdrop of increasingly intense competition between China and the United States, Latin America’s role as a geostrategic frontier for China has, objectively speaking, continued to rise. However, this is determined by the objective realities of China’s growing international influence and the existence of complementary advantages between China and Latin America across multiple fields. It by no means implies that China will treat Latin America as a “chessboard” or “battlefield” in its strategic contest with the United States, still less that China would, like the United States, seek to impose its will on others through unilateral means such as extreme pressure or power manipulation, or place its own strategic interests above those of Latin American countries. China hopes to play an active and constructive role in Latin America’s comprehensive development, rather than to win more “allies” in a “zero-sum” game in order to secure victory in competition with the United States. All third countries outside China and the United States possess independent political status and the right to full economic development. China and the United States are not like Britain and France in the 19th century, jointly “plundering” the world; nor are they like Britain and the United States at the Washington Conference, negotiating joint governance of the seas; still less are they like the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, establishing parallel systems and competing for hegemony. The continuous upgrading of China–Latin America cooperation is a natural process driven by the interplay of both sides’ concrete interest-based needs and shared value concepts. China–Latin America relations are not an appendage of China–U.S. relations, and their overall trajectory of development is not subject to U.S. policy toward Latin America or its strategy toward China. If the United States adopts a more relaxed approach toward Latin America and eases tensions with China, China and Latin America should draw closer; if the United States tightens control over Latin America and intensifies its containment and suppression of China, China and Latin America should draw even closer; if the United States treats one side with friendliness and the other with hostility, China and Latin America should still draw closer. 

China’s ideal blueprint is to work together with like-minded countries around the world to build and sustain an international order characterized by political multipolarization, economic mutual benefit, and civilizational diversity. This blueprint aligns closely with Latin American countries’ aspirations to elevate their international standing, raise their level of economic development, and preserve the distinctiveness of regional civilizations. Years of pragmatic cooperation between China and Latin America have already generated endogenous momentum on both sides for mutual understanding, trust, and cooperation. China and Latin America’s economic expectations of each other closely align with their shared identity as part of the “Global South.” This determines that between China and Latin America, there is neither the necessity to ask nor the possibility to answer the questions “who coerces whom,” “who exploits whom,” or “who becomes whom.” It is precisely on the basis of mutual respect, equality, and mutual benefit that China has signed Belt and Road Initiative cooperation plans with many Latin American countries. The scope of China–Latin America economic and trade cooperation continues to expand, the structure of such cooperation is steadily improving, and the degree of mutual dependence in fields such as agriculture, science and technology, and finance also continues to increase. The two sides draw on each other’s development experience, cooperate in responding to global nontraditional security issues, and are jointly building a China–Latin America community of common destiny.² China cannot do without Latin America, Latin America cannot do without China, and the world certainly cannot do without China–Latin America cooperation. In the next stage, in areas such as artificial intelligence, clean energy, telecommunications infrastructure, electronic commerce, critical minerals, and people-to-people exchanges, China and Latin America will certainly deepen their partnership in ways that better align with the needs of productivity development. They will move forward together and benefit the “Global South” and the international community.