Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.
The highlights this week: China releases a new strategy paper on Latin America amid U.S. threats to Venezuela, a right-wing candidate wins Chile’s presidential election, and a soccer corruption scandal rocks Argentina.
This week, U.S. President Donald Trump announced a naval blockade on sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela. In a social media post on Tuesday, Trump said that Venezuela was using oil revenue to fund drug violence and alleged that it stole oil from the United States.
The announcement adds to the existing U.S. pressure campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, which has already included military strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean, sanctions, and a terrorist designation for a Venezuelan crime group.
Trump has offered various justifications for U.S. action, including claims that he aims to fight drug trafficking and that Maduro’s government engages in human trafficking and is “illegitimate.” White House chief of staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair this week that Trump’s main goal is for Maduro to cry “uncle.”
Of the Trump administration’s actions, the blockade poses the greatest potential harm to Venezuelan civilians. Oil is responsible for more than half of Venezuela’s fiscal revenue. An estimated 40 percent of tankers transporting Venezuelan oil in recent years are under U.S. sanctions. Multiple ships have turned away from the country since last week, FP’s Keith Johnson writes.
Trump’s announcement came after his new National Security Strategy pledged to take aggressive action against drug trafficking and to maintain U.S. access to critical supply chains in the Western Hemisphere.
Meanwhile, China published its own strategy blueprint toward Latin America and the Caribbean last week. Beijing had last updated the document in 2016, and the new iteration—much longer than the previous version—is noteworthy for its contrasts with the Trump administration’s declared strategy and priorities in the region.
Both the United States and China pledge mutually beneficial relations with Latin American countries. The difference is how each alludes to the other: China says it does not mean to “target or exclude any third party” from the region, while the United States pledges to “deny non-Hemispheric competitors” the ability to position military forces or “own or control strategically vital assets.”
China’s paper makes references to multilateral cooperation and the United Nations, while multilateralism gets only one mention in the U.S. strategy. It also includes detailed language about the collective goals of global south countries, such as reforming global financial institutions. It goes into depth on efforts at scientific and military cooperation, anti-corruption work, and high-tech trade and investment.
Though it does not mention the United States by name, China’s paper criticizes “unilateral bullying” and “decoupling.” Taken together, the Chinese strategy reads like an indirect rebuttal to the Trump administration’s approach to Latin America and the Caribbean.
Most Latin American governments are trying to balance working with both countries. Brazil and Mexico’s leaders often strike similar chords to China on respecting trade norms, but the two countries have moved toward putting tariffs on Chinese goods this year to protect local industry. Meanwhile, though Argentina’s president flaunts his alignment with the United States, he renewed a swap line with China this year.
The unilateral nature of Trump’s actions toward Latin America means that many of the region’s leaders will likely cooperate with the United States in the short term. But in the long term, experts warn that governments might lean toward other powers, including China.
The “sugar highs of bullying the region’s leaders could lead to adverse consequences, including countries banding together against the United States—and the possibility that China may emerge as a more attractive partner,” the Carnegie Endowment’s Oliver Stuenkel wrote this year.
Trump’s blockade is just the latest example of such bullying: If the United States fully carries out the policy, it could be considered an act of war under international law.
Saturday, Dec. 20: Mercosur countries hold a meeting in Brazil.
Tuesday, Dec. 30: Honduran authorities face a deadline to declare the winner of the country’s Nov. 30 presidential election.
Escorted by police officers, former Bolivian President Luis Arce arrives at San Pedro Prison after a judge ordered his preventive detention while prosecutors investigate his alleged involvement in a corruption case in La Paz on Dec. 12.Jorge Bernal/AFP via Getty Images
Post-presidential probes. Former Bolivian President Luis Arce was out of office for about a month before being detained in a corruption probe last week. Bolivian authorities said the arrest proved their commitment to fighting corruption. However, one of Arce’s allies called it an abuse of power.
Meanwhile, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s September conviction for coup plotting saw two new twists this month. First, Bolsonaro’s conservative allies in congress led a successful vote to reduce his jail sentence. Then, amid broader de-escalation talks with Brazil, the United States dropped sanctions on the judge leading the case, which Trump previously called a “witch hunt.”
New billionaire. A Brazilian woman became the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire earlier this month: Luana Lopes Lara, the founder of prediction betting site Kalshi. The site announced an $11 billion valuation at the start of December.
Kalshi allows users to make predictions on a vast range of topics and operates inside the United States. In Brazil, meanwhile, regulators have looked uneasily on the booming popularity of online gambling. Officials have moved to regulate the sector as data shows that poor Brazilian families have increasingly used welfare payments on sports betting sites.
Others criticize the creeping monetization of everyday life implied by gambling sites. A Kalshi cofounder said the site wants to monetize “any difference in opinion.”
Argentine soccer scandal. A major anti-corruption probe has rocked the Argentine soccer world. Last week, police raided the offices of 17 clubs and the headquarters of the Argentine Football Association, investigating alleged money laundering. Although the association’s president, Claudio Tapia, denied wrongdoing, Argentine Sen. Patrícia Bullrich denounced him to soccer’s regional governing body CONMEBOL.
The anti-graft probe is unfolding as far-right President Javier Milei tries to push forward plans to privatize Argentina’s soccer sector. Though many fans oppose that reform, they have little love for Tapia, who has erratically changed the rules governing Argentine soccer in recent years. Last month, graffiti criticizing Tapia appeared on murals commemorating Argentina’s 2022 World Cup victory.
The chaotic governance of Argentine soccer is a mirror of the country itself, Hugo Alconada Mon wrote in El País: “No one knows what the rules of the game will be next semester, just as no one knows what taxes they will pay or what laws will govern Argentina in six months’ time.”
Which of the following is not an Argentine professional soccer club?
River
Club América
Independiente
Racing
Chilean presidential candidate José Antonio Kast of the Republican Party speaks to his supporters following the 2025 presidential election runoff in Santiago, Chile, on Dec. 14.Claudio Santana/Getty Images
José Antonio Kast won a sweeping victory in Chile’s presidential runoff election on Sunday, defeating the Communist Party’s Jeannette Jara by more than 16 percentage points. He will be Chile’s most right-wing leader since former dictator Augusto Pinochet, who Kast voted to keep in office in the 1988 referendum that ended Pinochet’s rule.
On the campaign trail, Kast pledged to take a tougher stance against crime and undocumented immigrants, suggesting a willingness to cooperate with key parts of Trump’s agenda for the region. This week, he endorsed the possibility of U.S. military force to oust Maduro.
Kast is the latest in a string of right-wing presidents to win major elections in Latin America, including Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa in April and Bolivia’s Rodrigo Paz in October. Kast has already made an international trip since winning the election: to Argentina, where he pledged a close relationship with Milei’s administration.
Though the trend suggests voters are comfortable with right-wing ideas, it also reflects a general anti-incumbency mood. It was not long ago that Latin American countries experienced a left-wing wave following the COVID-19 pandemic. Before that, the late 2010s saw a right-wing moment, which coincided with Trump’s first-term efforts to oust Maduro.
If Kast wants his conservative project to last in Chile, he will need to deliver on the economy and security. After being caught off guard by the salience of crime concerns at the start of his term, outgoing President Gabriel Boric mounted an anti-crime strategy that has seen the country’s homicide rate drop by 14 percent between the first half of 2024 and 2025. Kast says that he can do better.
