China megaport paves way into Latin America as wary US looks on

China has really taken significant action to strengthen its position in Latin America as the world waits to see how Donald Trump’s returning will shake relations with Beijing.

Trump won the US presidential poll with tariffs as high as 60 % on Chinese-made items. Farther north, though, a new China-backed megaport has the potential to create complete new trade routes that will pass North America completely.

This year saw the opening of the Chancay interface on the Peruvian coast by President Xi Jinping himself, a sign of how seriously China views the situation.

For the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation Forum ( APEC ) annual meeting, Xi was in Peru. However, Chancay and what it says about China’s growing confidence in a place that the US has usually seen as its sphere of influence were all in the public’s minds.

Washington is now paying the price for decades of disregard for its neighbors and their needs, as experienced spectators may have predicted.

” The US has been excluded from Latin America for so much, and China has moved in thus quickly,” says senior fellow at the Washington Peterson Institute for International Economics, Monica de Bolle.

She tells the BBC,” You have the neighborhood of America engaging immediately with China.” ” That’s going to be problematic”.

Even before it opened, the$ 3.5bn ( £2.75bn ) project, masterminded by China’s state-owned Cosco Shipping, had already turned a once-sleepy Peruvian fishing town into a logistical powerhouse set to transform the country’s economy.

China’s national Communist Party paper, the People’s Daily, called it” a justification of China-Peru win-win co-operation”.

Peru’s President Dina Boluarte was equally passionate, describing the megaport as a “nerve center” that would provide” a point of connection to access the giant Asian business”.

The effects extend far beyond the riches of one little Peruvian country. When Chancay is fully operational, items entering Shanghai and other Eastern ports are anticipated to pass through it from Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, and actually Brazil.

China currently has extensive appetite for the country’s exports, including Portuguese soybeans and Chilean copper. This new harbor will now be able to handle larger ships and shorten the duration of delivery by 35 to 23 nights.

Nevertheless, the new interface may favour goods as well as exports. Chile and Brazil have eliminated tax exemptions for specific clients on low-value foreign purchases as evidence increases that an flow of cheap Chinese goods purchased online may be affecting local market.

As nerve US defense hawks have pointed out, if Chancay can provide ultra-large box vessels, it can also control Chinese ships.

Gen. Laura Richardson, who recently retired as the head of US Southern Command, which covers Latin America and the Caribbean, has issued the most severe instructions.

She has accused China of “playing the’ much game’ with its development of dual-use sites and facilities throughout the region”, adding that those sites may offer as “points of potential multi-domain access for the]People’s Liberation Army ] and strategic maritime chokepoints”.

Even if that prospect never materialises, there is a strong perception that the US is losing ground in Latin America as China forges ahead with its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Joe Biden, the incoming US senator, made his initial and final trip to South America during his four-year word, and he was one of the officials at the Apec conference. He reportedly shaved a smaller amount than China’s Xi, according to internet observers.

The London School of Economics ‘ Global South Unit’s Director, Prof. L. Varo Méndez, points out that Xi was often visiting the area and cultivating good relationships there.

China just needs to be a little bit better to get through the doorway, he claims because the US has set the bar so low.

The BRI targets Latin America, of training, as well as other regions of the world. Since 2023, China’s extraordinary infrastructure splurge has pumped money into roughly 150 countries globally.

Some projects are still unfinished, and many developing nations that signed up for Beijing’s money have ended up in debt as a result.

Perhaps so, left-wing and right-wing governments everywhere have cast aside their first concerns of China, because” their passions are aligned” with those of Beijing, says the Peterson Institute’s Ms de Bolle:” They have lowered their shield out of sheer necessity”.

Given that Beijing has now “established a pretty strong grip” in the region at a time when President-elect Trump wants to “rein in” China, Ms de Bolle claims that this turn of events is a warning to US interests.

She adds that most nations want to stay on the right part of both great power, and that” we will eventually start to see the US putting stress on Latin America.”

The place is told that it has no choice but to be forced, which would be very foolish.

Due to the diplomatic free trade agreements that Trump may try to renegotiate or even renounce, South American nations like Peru, Chile, and Colombia would be under pressure in the future.

They will closely watch the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement ( USMCA ), which will be reviewed in July 2026 but will be the subject of negotiations in 2025.

Whatever happens, Prof Méndez of the London feels that the place needs more co-operation.

” It should n’t be that all roads lead to Beijing or to Washington. He says Latin America needs a clear local strategy and needs a more tactical approach, not to mention the difficulty of getting 33 nations to agree on a common strategy.

Eric Farnsworth, vice-president at the Washington-based Council of the Americas, feels that there is still much kindness towards the US in Latin America, but the country’s “massive wants” are not being met by its northern ally.

According to him,” the US needs to up its activity in the region because individuals would choose it if there was a viable alternative to China.”

He sees some trust from the incoming Trump presidency, particularly with Marco Rubio’s appointment as secretary of state, unlike many others.

Rubio claims that there is a real need to make economic connections with the Western Hemisphere in a way that has n’t been done in a while.

However, Latin America has historically been seen as a largely illegal immigration and illegal drugs for subsequent US presidents. There is little evidence that the US will change its mind anytime soon, especially given that Trump is so fixated on ideas to arrest record numbers of immigrants.

Latin America is gearing up for a slippery four decades, just like the rest of the world, and it is vulnerable if US and Chinese trade negotiations break out.