All six Latin American leaders share an ideological affinity with Trump, and are the closest thing his government has to strategic partners/vassals in the region.
The Trump administration is trying to cobble together a regional alliance of US client states, with the goal of curbing China’s influence on the American continent. To that end, Trump has announced plans to host a presidential summit at the Doral Hotel in Miami on March 7, to which he has invited Argentina’s Javier Milei, Paraguay’s Santiago Peña, Bolivia’s Rodrigo Paz, El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa, and Honduras’ Tito Asfura.
As an article in Infobae notes, all six leaders share an ideological affinity with Trump, and are the closest thing his government has to strategic partners/vassals in the region. For the sake of convenience, we’ll call them the “Six Stooges”. The word “stooge” perfectly encapsulates the role expected of these six national leaders, two of whom (Milei and Asfura) have already benefited directly from the Trump administration’s election meddling. From Merriam-Webster:
stooge
noun
a
: one who plays a subordinate or compliant role to a principal
a gangster and his stooges
b
: puppet sense 3
just a stooge for the pharmaceutical industry
Even the verb, “to stooge”, fits the bill nicely:
stooge
verb
stooged; stooging
intransitive verb: to act as a stooge
… Congressmen who stooge for the oil and mineral interests …
—New Republic
The number of US stooges could grow in the next few weeks, if the Trump White House issues invites to other Latin American leaders who have good relations with Washington. One obvious candidate would be Chile’s new far-right president elect, José Antonio Kast, though he doesn’t officially become president until March 11, four days after the summit.
The Miami summit has one clear geopolitical objective in mind, according to Infobae: to counter China’s growing strategic influence over natural resources, food production and the main trade routes in Latin America (translation my own):
Towards the end of 2025, the Republican administration published its National Security Strategy, which set out the main contours of the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.
To this geopolitical concept, which proposes to restrict the strategic activity of [US rivals] in Latin America, was added the new US Defence Doctrine, which prioritises the region and establishes deterrence mechanisms against China.
Then, a few days ago, in Washington, the United States led a global meeting on critical minerals that aims to contain Beijing’s influence over these resources that are so important for international security and the world economy.
At the conclusion of this summit on critical minerals, Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay signed agreements with the State Department committing to distance themselves from Chinese efforts to control these resources…
In early 2026, Trump issued an executive order titled “Adjustment of Imports of Critical Processed Minerals and Their Derived Products into the United States.”
The Republican leader’s order calls for international cooperation to bolster US mining security, as the local industry is entirely dependent on imports of 12 critical minerals over which Beijing holds near-monopoly control.
It is in this context that… Trump announced the creation of a strategic reserve of critical minerals that he called Project Vault.
This White House initiative will combine almost $1.7 billion of private financing with a loan of $10 billion from the Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM Bank).
These efforts are unlikely to be enough to change the balance of power over critical mineral supply chains in any measurable way. As we have noted in previous posts, China’s main chokepoint in the rare earth minerals space is not so much in the mining of the minerals as it in their processing, and analysis suggests it will take many years for the US to develop that capacity, if indeed it ever does.
To have any chance of achieving that, the US needs to tap Latin America’s wealth of mineral resources, especially since China imposed export restrictions on dual-use technologies and barriers to trading critical minerals. The region is home to some of the world’s largest deposits of lithium, copper and silver, all essential for the “green” energy revolution and AI scale-up, as well as large deposits of graphite, nickel, manganese and rare earth elements, of which Brazil is the world’s second largest source.
Geopolitical Flashpoints
As NC regulars are well aware, China has made big incursions into the US’ so-called “back yard” over the past two and a half decades, as both a trading partner and an investor. The US continues to hold sway over Central America and, pound for pound, is still Latin America and the Caribbean’s largest trading partner. But that is predominantly due to its huge trade flows with Mexico, which account for well over half of all US-LatAm trade.
China is already South America’s largest trade partner, having increased its volume of trade with the region roughly 35-fold between 2001 and 2025. And it continues to grow despite increasing US protestations. Chinese companies have also significantly increased their investment in the region in recent years. Trump is determined not only to halt this trend but to reverse it. In so doing, he is creating the perfect conditions for further geopolitical flashpoints.
It is fairly clear by now that one of the key conditions for Venezuela’s new interim President Delcy Rodriguez to stay in power and not suffer the same fate as her predecessor, Nicolás Maduro, or worse, is to stop selling oil to the US’ strategic rivals, including China, Russia and Iran. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov recently complained that Russian “companies are being openly forced out of Venezuela”.
The same presumably applies to Chinese companies. As Max Blumenthal reports for the Gray Zone, a US-funded opposition journalist recently revealed that the Trump DOJ has crafted a secret indictment of Venezuela’s Acting President to “hold it over her head,” and will execute it if she “derails”:
The Trump administration is using a secret indictment to assert leverage over Venezuela’s Acting President Delcy Rodríguez, according to the editor-in-chief of the US government-funded outlet, Armando.info.
“One of the information we manage is that the US is holding an indictment against [Rodriguez] to make it public, just in case she derails,” Valentina Lares Martiz revealed during a February 6, 2026 webinar hosted by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an outlet also sponsored by the US government.
“Just to hold it over her head?” asked OCCRP deputy editor Julia Wallace.
“Yeah, so, I think she, she and her brother [Jorge Rodríguez], they are in this survival mode, and they will have the capacity to move the pieces, as long as the US backs her up,” Armando.info’s Lares Martiz affirmed.
“A Metallic NATO”
The Trump administration’s aggressive moves in Latin America represent a sharp intensification of a process already begun under the Biden administration. On June 19, 2022, Biden signed a “minerals security partnership” (MSP) with some of the US’ strategic partners, including the European Commission, Canada, Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea and the UK. Reuters at the time dubbed it a “metallic NATO.”
Biden’s SOUTHCOM commander, General Laura Richardson, repeatedly spoke of the need to “box out” China and Russia from Latin America’s strategic resources as well as set up a Marshall Fund for the region.
Now, that “metallic NATO” is beginning to take shape. A couple of weeks ago, the EU, the US, and Japan announced enhanced cooperation on critical mineral supply chains, aiming to increase the economic and national security of the three parties. A ministerial meeting held in Washington culminated in a joint statement of intent consisting of two main components, reported Agencia Nova:
First, the European Union and the United States have committed to finalising a Memorandum of Understanding within 30 days to strengthen the security of critical mineral supply chains. The document will identify areas of cooperation to stimulate demand and diversify supply, through the identification and support of projects in the mining, refining, processing, and recycling sectors.
Building on existing cooperation initiatives, the European Union, the United States, and Japan also intend to develop joint action plans and explore the creation of a plurilateral trade initiative with like-minded partners in the critical minerals sector. This initiative could include the development of coordinated trade policies and common mechanisms, such as minimum border-adjusted prices, markets based on shared standards, subsidies to bridge price gaps, or long-term purchasing agreements.
During his recent eulogy on European imperialism at the Munich Security Conference, US Secretary of State Macro Rubio spoke of the need to create “a western supply chain for critical minerals not vulnerable to extortion from other powers.” As the Events in Ukraine substack put it, “what a delightful way to rephrase invading other countries and abducting their leaders to control their resources.”
It is far from clear how the three Latin American countries that have already signed up to the US State Department’s plans to counter Chinese influence in the region, Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay, stand to benefit from the arrangement? According to Infobae, Trump’s allies in the region will enjoy special privileges when it comes to distributing the resources linked to “Project Vault”:
The Republican leader is willing to collaborate, support and defend in totum Milei, Peña, Paz, Bukele, Noboa and Asfura, as long as they keep in mind in all they do that the global enemy of the United States is China.
From this perspective, the White House will try, together with its Latin American allies (the “Six Stooges”), to block all contracts that may enable China to increase its critical mineral reserves, strengthen its food security, facilitate its military intelligence presence and develop infrastructure that facilitates its international trade.
In other words, just about everything.
One thing that is clear is that the local populaces of Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay are unlikely to benefit from their respective governments’ total subordination to closer ties with Washington. On the contrary, this move signals an even more aggressive push toward resource extractivism, with all the resulting environmental destruction and inevitable harms to local communities and labour rights.
Peru’s Chancay Mega-Port in Trump’s Sights
Washington is now shifting its focus to Peru’s Chancay mega-port, which was built with majority Chinese funding and, once complete, will become South America’s largest deep-water port.
On January 29, the First Constitutional Court of Lima ruled in favour of China’s Cosco Shipping Ports Chancay Perú (CSPCP) by ordering the national transport infrastructure regulator, Ositrán, to refrain from exercising its supervisory, regulatory, inspection, and sanctioning powers over the terminal’s operations.
It was a controversial move that has sparked genuine concerns about loss of national sovereignty in the Andean nation. The dispute has triggered debate extending well beyond regulatory law, notes BNE Intellinews:
At issue are the governance model of a privately financed but systemically significant port, the interpretation of Peru’s port legislation, and the broader geopolitical implications of China’s expanding role in regional logistics networks.
Ositrán, the body responsible for supervising infrastructure of public use, characterised the legal action as unprecedented. Its president, Verónica Zambrano, publicly argued that the ruling risks creating a differentiated regime for a single operator providing services to the public while remaining outside the regulator’s standard oversight framework.
In statements to RPP, Zambrano warned that the decision constrains Ositrán’s ability to verify compliance with user-protection standards, including transparency obligations, non-discrimination principles, and formalised complaints mechanisms.
The court, however, adopted a narrower constitutional interpretation. According to details of the ruling published by OjoPúblico, the judge noted that the terminal’s classification as “private property, public use” does not convert it into a public-domain asset nor automatically subject it to the full regulatory regime applied to concessioned infrastructure.
Drawing upon Article 60 of Peru’s Constitution, which safeguards freedom of private enterprise, the judgment held that infrastructure developed entirely with private capital and absent a state concession contract must be subject only to expressly defined legal interventions.
The latest scandal provided the perfect excuse for the Trump administration to denounce the deal, which has been a constant source of teeth gnashing in Washington since its inauguration in 2024. The US ambassador in Lima, Bernie Navarro, a Trump appointee and close associate of Rubio’s, even pulled the sovereignty card, warning that “there is no higher price to pay [from dealing with China] than losing your sovereignty.”
To hear the US ambassador to Peru and the US’ Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs bemoan the court decision on the grounds that it limits the Peruvian state’s ability to supervise strategic infrastructure is beyond bizarre. That is not to say that the accusation is entirely unwarranted but rather that the US is the last country on the planet to be casting such aspersions. But hypocrisy is a particularly strong feature of the current regime.
In recent months, the Trump administration has attacked Venezuela, kidnapped its head of state and (claims to have) taken direct control of the nation’s oil export business, the proceeds of which are being hidden in an offshore Qatari bank. That was after ordering the extrajudicial killings of dozens of non-combatants on the high seas, in flagrant violation of international law, as well as threatening to invade Greenland and turn Canada into the 51st state.
Now, Trump and Rubio are subjecting Cuba to a total energy blockade with the hope that it will trigger social and political unrest. It has already caused a 50% collapse in the nation’s energy-producing capacity. This, in turn, has triggered a collapse in the government’s ability to deliver even the most basic public services, including health and education. Medicines and food are in dangerously short supply. Children are reportedly already dying as a result.
A couple of other recent developments:
The Trump administration’s aggressive posturing in Latin America is clearly impacting Chinese interests in the region. Following Panama’s high court ruling against Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison’s right to operate key ports on the Panama Canal, Beijing warned that the government in Panama will “pay a heavy political and economic price” if it does not reverse course…
Nick Corbishley 