Why Is the U.S. Sending Its Top Diplomat to South America? It's About China.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio — the country's top diplomat, responsible for managing relationships with other nations — will visit Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru in September 2026, according to a Reuters report published September 4 (Reuters). He plans to meet with newly elected presidents in all three countries.
The reason this trip matters is that China has been building economic ties across Latin America for years, and in some countries its presence now overshadows that of the United States.
Peru shows this most clearly. According to Peruvian government data through November 2025, China accounts for 33 percent of Peru's trade, compared with 14 percent for the United States (Reuters). That gap grew wider with the opening of the Chancay port in 2025, a massive project north of Lima backed by Chinese state-linked companies. Peru's central bank initially projected the investment at USD 1.3 billion (SMV Peru; BCRP). The port makes Peru a gateway for South American goods heading to Asian markets.
To understand the bigger picture, it helps to think of the U.S. and China as two large companies competing for the same customers. Each wants to be the dominant trading partner in Latin America — the one building the ports, buying the goods, and financing the roads.
The U.S.-China relationship has gone through cycles of tension and cautious cooperation. Trump and his allies have argued that tariffs — taxes on imported goods, used to pressure another country into changing its trade practices — will push China to negotiate better trade terms (New York Times). Tariffs from Trump's first term reached 25 percent on many Chinese products, with more added later (New York Times).
On the diplomatic side, Rubio met China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi in July 2025 during a tense period in trade relations. Rubio called the meeting an effort to set a "constructive baseline" for continued talks, not a negotiation (Reuters). A year later, in July 2026, they met again for about 90 minutes at a regional gathering, this time during a fragile pause in trade hostilities (Reuters). Analysts believed that meeting focused on preparing for a second summit between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (Reuters).
After that July 2026 meeting, Rubio said the two countries were working to set up investment and trade boards — standing committees that would manage economic relations between the world's two largest economies — ahead of a planned visit by Xi Jinping (Bloomberg). Their scope and authority have not been made public.
Trump has appeared more interested in economic deals with China than in raising human rights concerns (New York Times). Some foreign policy analysts believe Trump would like to divide the world into spheres of influence — regions where each major power, whether the U.S., China, or Russia, holds dominant sway (New York Times). If that reading is correct, it would place Latin America in Washington's zone and cast Rubio's trip as an effort to reassert U.S. dominance in a region Beijing has treated as open for business.
The backdrop is a challenging one for Washington. Xi Jinping and then-President Joe Biden met in Peru in November 2024 at the APEC summit in Lima, a gathering of Pacific Rim economies (New York Times). That meeting took place just as the Chancay port was about to open, and it captured a reality the U.S. has not been able to reverse.
The broader context here is that this is not mainly a competition for military bases or political loyalty. It is a competition for trade routes, infrastructure, and the economic dependence that comes with them. Peru's trade numbers tell the story plainly: China's 33 percent share is a recorded fact, not a forecast. Colombia and Ecuador face similar dynamics, with Chinese investment flowing into mining and infrastructure projects across the region.
The key question is whether Washington can offer something beyond tariffs and tough talk. The proposed investment and trade boards with China could give the two countries a permanent channel for managing economic disputes, if they take shape. But for leaders in Latin America, the decision comes down to practical terms: who is actually building the ports, funding the roads, and buying their country's exports. On those metrics, China's position is already strong and still growing. Rubio's trip is an early indication of whether the Trump administration plans to challenge that position head-on or manage it through the kind of sphere-of-influence arrangement some analysts see shaping the president's approach.
