The Neighbor You Can't Evict
The U.S., China, and Latin America

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On June 8, Foreign Policy published an essay with a blunt title: the United States cannot exclude China from Latin America. It walks through why Washington's China strategy, including the Shield of the Americas summit held in March, keeps running into a structural wall. Reading it, I was reminded that a "sphere of influence" on a map is, on the ground, built from concrete things stacked up over time: ports, roads, and contracts.

Integration, Not Occupation

The essay's point is that China's method is neither military occupation nor turning states into vassals. It is economic integration through infrastructure investment, trade networks, digital technology, and energy development. Once you are inside the ports, the undersea cables, and the power grids, you create a dependence that is hard to tear out. The Monroe Doctrine was built on keeping foreign powers out. It never imagined how to remove a power that is already in.

The Numbers in the Soybean Trade

Soybeans tell the clearest story. In late 2025, China nearly halted imports of U.S. soybeans in retaliation for the trade war. From January to August 2025, U.S. soybeans shipped to China fell to 218 million bushels, down sharply from 985 million bushels in the same period a year earlier. Over that stretch Brazil sent China roughly 2.5 billion bushels, filling the gap left by the United States. U.S. farm exports to China in 2026 are expected to total about 9 billion dollars, the lowest since the 2018 trade war. To support the switch, China, through COSCO, has invested about 1.3 billion dollars so far in Peru's Chancay port (of a planned 3.5 billion in total), with COFCO also investing in Brazil's Santos port. Once complete, Chancay is envisioned as a regional hub bundling exports from Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, and Colombia. Once a logistics route is drawn, no political declaration can simply redraw it.

Choosing Both Sides

Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, and Chile avoid taking sides between the U.S. and China. Their national interests, their need for economic development, and their sense of agency all refuse a simple choice of camps. Call it many-sided diplomacy if you like; in practice it means keeping as many options open as possible. As long as this strategic autonomy holds across the region, Washington's strategy of exclusion ends up partial, catching only some countries and leaking everywhere else. The essay makes the point quietly rather than loudly. Latin America is not the stage; it is an actor on that stage holding its own script.

Once a logistics route is drawn, no political declaration can simply redraw 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.