Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.
The highlights this week: Chile, Mexico, and Peru talk trade at a summit in Asia, U.S. boat strikes in the Caribbean imperil regional diplomacy, and a beloved podcast celebrates its quinceañera.
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Last week’s tête-à-tête between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping was far from the only news at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in South Korea. Officials from APEC’s Latin American members—Chile,…
Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.
The highlights this week: Chile, Mexico, and Peru talk trade at a summit in Asia, U.S. boat strikes in the Caribbean imperil regional diplomacy, and a beloved podcast celebrates its quinceañera.
Sign up to receive Latin America Brief in your inbox every Friday.
Last week’s tête-à-tête between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping was far from the only news at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in South Korea. Officials from APEC’s Latin American members—Chile, Mexico, and Peru—attended the event and announced new steps toward trade integration with Asian partners.
Their visits, which followed Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s appearance at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit days before, continue a trend of Latin American countries seeking to deepen trade ties with Asia in the face of U.S. tariffs.
At APEC, Chilean President Gabriel Boric called trade protectionism an “elephant in the room,” saying that “it is multilateralism and dialogue that will bring development, not impositions by the strongest actor.”
On the sidelines of the summit, Chile and South Korea announced a new partnership between their export promotion agencies. With the Philippines, Chile agreed to fast-track a draft trade agreement; the Philippines also announced that it would launch a committee to explore a free trade deal with Peru. Mexico and Vietnam held talks to boost economic ties.
The meetings built on some existing trade agreements. Though APEC is a forum rather than a free trade zone, Chile, Mexico, and Peru are all members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, or CPTPP. (The United States was part of talks on creating a precursor to the CPTPP in the 2010s, but Trump withdrew from the process in 2017.)
The meetings that Latin American countries held last week aimed for even more integration, involving non-CPTPP members such as the Philippines. They also focused on more specific sectors. For example, Chile launched trilateral talks with New Zealand and Singapore to create a “green economy partnership agreement” designed to work together on technologies such as clean hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuels.
Boric was the only Latin American president to attend APEC. Mexico sent its economy secretary, while Peru sent its foreign trade minister, marking one of the country’s first foreign-policy moves under new Peruvian President José Jerí. The Peruvian minister, Teresa Mera, echoed Boric’s anti-protectionist message, saying that Peru was “totally convinced of the benefits of trade openness and multilateralism.”
Mexico, however, recently announced a caveat to its trade openness: plans for tariffs on certain goods from countries with which it does not have a free trade deal. CPTPP countries would be protected from these duties, but others—such as China and the Philippines—would not. Mexican officials are still ironing out the final details.
It could be months or years before bilateral trade between Chile, Mexico, and Peru and their Asian partners rises measurably as a result of last week’s talks. But the impacts of this trade diversification could be felt by the time the APEC summit next reaches the region’s doorstep: This week, Mexico was chosen to host the event in 2028.
Friday, Nov. 7: French President Emmanuel Macron visits Mexico City.
Saturday, Nov. 8: New Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz takes office.
Sunday, Nov. 9, to Monday, Nov. 10: The European Union-Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) summit is held in Santa Marta, Colombia.
Monday, Nov. 10, to Friday, Nov. 21: This year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP30, takes place in Belém, Brazil.
Sunday, Nov. 16: Chile holds a general election.
Two men wearing suits stand face-to-face on a green surface, talking. Behind them are many dense high-rise buildings in the cityscape of Rio de Janeiro.
Prince William speaks with Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes on a visit to Sugarloaf Mountain in Rio de Janeiro on Nov. 3.Chris Jackson/Getty Images
COP30 pregames. Some 300 mayors from around the world gathered in Rio de Janeiro on Monday to pledge their commitment to climate action. It was one of the many events running in parallel to this year’s U.N. climate conference in the Amazonian city of Belém, which officially begins next Monday.
The side events are running almost in parallel, to be precise: Due to a hotel shortage in Belém, some have been pushed to other Brazilian cities before the conference itself kicks off. In São Paulo between Monday and Wednesday, global business representatives discussed their role in the green transition. And in Belém itself, world leaders such as French President Emmanuel Macron met starting on Thursday for a two-day summit about climate action.
Diplomats from Brazil and Azerbaijan—which hosted last year’s climate conference—already presented one of the summit’s main expected outcomes on Wednesday: a nonbinding plan about where to source $1.3 trillion per year in funding for developing countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change. The proposal envisions drawing on development banks, private finance, direct government grants, and more.
This newsletter writer will be in Belém starting next week; follow along for on-the-ground coverage.
Chinese tech funding. Chinese venture capital funders are increasingly looking to invest money in Latin American start-ups as they face intense competition at home, Bloomberg’s Juan Pablo Spinetto wrote this week.
A company co-founded by Chinese tycoon Jack Ma recently announced funding for a lending platform for small and medium-sized businesses in Latin America, while Chinese firms BAI Capital and Tencent have directly funded up-and-coming start-ups in Mexico and Argentina.
Venture capital funding in Latin American tech reached an annual peak of almost $16 billion in 2021—when global interest rates were low—but it has sharply dropped to an estimated $5 billion this year. During the 2021 peak, U.S. firms as well as Japan’s SoftBank were responsible for much of the investment.
More recently, countries including Brazil have specifically courted Chinese investment in their tech sectors.
Podcast turns 15. One of the most beloved Spanish-language podcasts about Latin America is celebrating its quinceañera: Radio Ambulante produces long-form episodes about true stories from the region. Its 15th season features episodes about an Argentine family in Antarctica, the power of learning Haitian Creole, and an unplanned departure from Venezuela.
The show’s archive is a rich resource for intimate-scale looks at the region’s history and politics. For those getting started, Foreign Policy recommends the episode “Superman en Chile,” the story of how actor Christopher Reeve traveled to Santiago in the 1980s to support Chilean actors who were threatened with death during the dictatorship.
The U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which undergirds the annual COP summits, was opened for signature in Rio de Janeiro in what year?
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A warship is seen in blue waters behind the silhouettes of two people.
People watch the USS Gravely, a U.S. Navy warship, departing the Port of Port of Spain in Trinidad and Tobago on Oct. 30.Martin Bernetti/AFP via Getty Images
Plans for high-profile regional summits were upended this week as tensions over the U.S. military buildup near Venezuela rippled through regional relations.
On Monday, the Dominican Republic announced that it would postpone the Summit of the Americas until next year. The diplomatic gathering, which brings together Latin American and Caribbean countries as well as the United States and Canada, was slated for December. It has occurred around every three years since 1994.
The Dominican government said the destruction caused by Hurricane Melissa was partially to blame for the cancellation, but it also cited “deep divergences” that hinder “productive dialogue” in the hemisphere. It did not give further details.
Last month, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said she would not attend the summit in part because certain countries were not invited. Those left out included Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Sheinbaum has spoken out against the U.S. bombing campaign against alleged drug boats in the region. Other countries, such as Trinidad and Tobago, have embraced the strikes.
The situation has caused a particularly hard break between the United States and Colombia. Washington sanctioned Colombian President Gustavo Petro after he criticized the strikes as “murder.” The U.S. Treasury Department said Petro had allowed drug trafficking to flourish.
Those sanctions—and concerns about upsetting Trump—reportedly led European officials such as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to cancel their plans to attend this weekend’s summit in Colombia between the EU and CELAC. European Council President António Costa is still expected to attend.
The EU-CELAC meeting, initially intended to highlight trade relations, is now expected to include consultations on the U.S. military buildup. “This CELAC meeting only makes sense now if it is to discuss the issue of U.S. warships,” Lula, who will attend, said Tuesday.