Who Gets to Regulate Chancay?
The Homework Peru's Next President Inherits

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On July 1, an appellate court in Lima ruled in the long-running dispute over Chancay, the Chinese-built megaport on Peru's central coast. It dismissed the amparo suit brought by COSCO Shipping Ports Chancay Peru and confirmed that Ositrán, Peru's infrastructure regulator, may supervise the terminal — reversing a first-instance decision issued six months earlier. Keiko Fujimori takes office in a little over a week, and her government inherits this unfinished file on day one.

What happened: a first-instance ruling undone

The question at issue was whether Chancay falls inside Peru's port regulatory framework at all. A ruling of January 29, 2026 had ordered Peruvian authorities to refrain from exercising powers of "regulation, supervision, oversight and sanction" over the port — in effect locking the regulator out. Ositrán appealed immediately, and on July 1 the Second Constitutional Chamber of Lima's Superior Court voided that decision and reaffirmed the regulator's competence (Infobae Perú).

Ositrán's argument runs as follows: Chancay is not a private-use terminal but public infrastructure, and the exclusivity granted to COSCO covers only certain intermediate services such as towage and vessel assistance. The port itself is obliged to handle cargo from any user. COSCO, for its part, maintains that the conditions under which it committed roughly US$1.3 billion were changed after the fact, and has said it will escalate to the Constitutional Court (MundoMarítimo). The matter is far from settled.

Context: a port in its second year

Chancay sits about 80 km north of Lima. COSCO Shipping Ports holds 60 percent of the operating company and the Peruvian miner Volcan holds 40 percent. It opened on November 14, 2024, timed to Xi Jinping's visit. Phase one is designed for one million TEU a year plus six million tonnes of bulk cargo and 160,000 vehicles, with total phased investment reported at up to US$3.5 billion (COSCO SHIPPING Ports).

Performance has not yet caught up with design. Reported throughput for 2025, its first full year, ranges from roughly 290,000 to 340,000 TEU — around a third of nominal capacity. Even so, Peru's total exports hit a record of about US$90 billion in 2025, up 21 percent year on year, with Chancay's launch cited among the drivers. The accurate description today is a port that is still small but growing fast.

Why Washington has been watching

What worries Washington is less the port's size than the question of who controls it. Days after the January ruling, the State Department's Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs said it was concerned Peru could be left powerless to oversee one of its largest ports, and framed the episode as a warning that "cheap Chinese money costs sovereignty" (NPR, February 12, 2026). Beijing rejected the characterisation outright.

The concern extends beyond Chancay. On March 31, 2026, a company tied to China's Jinzhao group signed the contract to build and operate the new San Juan de Marcona terminal in Ica — a roughly US$405 million build, 30 months of construction, a 27.5-year operating term, and a public-use port serving inland iron ore deposits. That would give Chinese capital a second logistics node on Peru's coast.

The tension: pro-US politics, China-facing economics

Fujimori's economic platform rests on attracting investment and easing regulation, and Washington welcomed her win quickly. In a statement dated June 30, Secretary of State Marco Rubio congratulated the president-elect and said the administration looked forward to deepening security cooperation and strengthening bilateral cooperation on investment and trade. It is worth noting this was a written statement rather than a call, and carried no specific commitments.

The economics move more slowly. China is Peru's largest trading partner, taking roughly 30 percent of its exports against a little over 10 percent for the United States. In mining, industry estimates put Chinese-linked projects at about US$23 billion of Peru's roughly US$64 billion investment portfolio, and flagship operations — Toromocho (Chinalco), Las Bambas (MMG), Marcona (Shougang) — are Chinese-owned. Peru's copper-led mining boom and its exposure to China are the same fact seen from two sides.

Fujimori herself has been reported as rejecting automatic alignment with any great power and describing her position as strategically balanced between the two. In practice: a pro-US banner, with existing Chinese investment left where it stands.

Two deadlines stacked against inauguration day

Trade deadlines cluster just before the swearing-in. According to reporting, the blanket 10 percent additional tariff introduced by US executive order in April 2025 is set to lapse on July 24, with no clarity on what follows. Separately, the Section 232 process on critical minerals is still running, though additional tariffs on processed critical minerals have been deferred in favour of continued negotiations with trading partners.

For Peruvian copper, the exposure looks limited. The Section 232 copper tariff targets semi-finished and derivative goods such as pipe and wire, not the concentrates, cathodes and ores Peru mostly ships. On top of that, the 2009 US-Peru trade promotion agreement lets most Peruvian copper and gold enter duty free. The headline shock and the actual taxable base are two different things.

My perspective

Reading this as a scoreboard of US versus China probably leads you astray. What the July 1 ruling addressed was neither ownership nor nationality but an administrative law question: can a regulator supervise a piece of infrastructure? That the port's majority shareholder is a Chinese company is perfectly lawful under Peruvian law. The contested point is whether domestic oversight reaches over the top of it. The subject of the fight is state capacity, not diplomacy.

That framing travels well to other countries hosting large foreign-financed infrastructure. Ports, telecoms, power — leave the regulatory perimeter vague at contract signature, and reclaiming oversight later takes years of litigation. The lesson Chancay leaves the region is not a binary of accept or refuse the investment, but a procedural one about what you write into the deal when you accept it.

Three things to watch: whether and when the Constitutional Court takes up COSCO's appeal and how it rules; who lands in the trade, transport and energy ministries when the cabinet is named after the July 28 inaugural address; and how close Chancay's quarterly throughput comes to its one-million-TEU design capacity. The faster the third grows, the heavier the first becomes politically.

Glossary

OSITRAN = Peru's regulator for private investment in public transport infrastructure — ports, airports, roads. amparo = the Latin American constitutional action for alleged violations of constitutional rights. TEU = twenty-foot equivalent unit, the standard container volume measure. Fiestas Patrias = Peru's independence holidays on July 28-29, traditionally the date of presidential inaugurations.

What is being contested is not the port's nationality, but whether the country's own oversight reaches over the top of it.

※ This article is the author’s commentary based on public information. Please confirm the latest figures, dates and procedures with governments and primary sources. Quotations are kept minimal and sources are cited.