Donald Trump calls Marco Rubio the best secretary of state in American history.
On the day after U.S. forces captured Nicolás Maduro, the illegitimate president of Venezuela, Rubio explained, “This is the Western Hemisphere. This is where we live – and we’re not going to allow the Western Hemisphere to be a base of operation for adversaries, competitors, and rivals of the United States.”
Today, in the wake of Flávio Bolsonaro’s 2-million-vote lead in Brazil’s presidential election, President Lula has accused the Trump administration of meddling. An odd statement, given that it was the Biden administration that funneled tens of millions of dollars through USAID to bolster Lula’s campaign in 2022.
Just since the Trump administration dismantled USAID in July 2025, market-oriented candidates have swept Latin American elections – in Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Peru, Colombia, and Costa Rica – and, if Kalshi is right, Flávio Bolsonaro will defeat Lula on October 25.
Winning elections does not by itself mean long-term change. But the Trump administration appears committed to working with friendly hemispheric governments to vastly increase economic and regional security investments – which prior administrations failed to do.
During the 2000 campaign, George W. Bush pledged, “Should I become president, I will look south, not as an afterthought, but as a fundamental commitment of my presidency.” Then hanging chads and September 11th refocused the U.S. on the Middle East, and Bush’s hemispheric vision was left in the dust.
By January 2006, Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, lamented that “Latin Americans want economic ties with the United States but feel slighted by Washington and uneasy about the U.S. role in the world.” He predicted that “the costs of the estrangement will be high for both sides.”
According to Hakim, Latin American leaders were questioning America’s dependability as a partner. Mother Jones even joked that Bush’s blundering had “unified” Latin America on the Left. U.S.-Latin American relations fell to their lowest point since the end of the Cold War. That trend continued even through Trump’s first term.
In 2021 and 2022, seven Latin American countries, including Peru, Honduras, Chile, Colombia, and Brazil, democratically chose to transition from administrations more aligned with the right to progressive or left-wing governments. Guatemala followed suit in 2023, while Ecuador alone moved to the right.
Then came the shot heard around the world – the surprise election of Javier Milei in Argentina in 2023, which began the swing back to the right across Latin America, beginning with the victory of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador – and helped fuel the 2024 Trump campaign.
Since Trump’s election, Chile chose José Antonio Kast, Honduras elected Nasry Asfura, Bolivia elected Rodrigo Paz, and Peru chose Keiko Fujimori, all reversing the results of Biden-era elections. The likely runoff victory of Flávio Bolsonaro would be the icing on the cake – leaving cartel-plagued Mexico as the only major leftist government south of the Rio Grande.
To address security issues, the Trump administration created the Shield of the Americas with 17 nations, including Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Bolivia (but not yet Chile or Brazil) as signatories to the joint security pact.
In September, Secretary of State Rubio traveled to Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, three of the four nations (including Panama) that are recipients of more than $52 million in Foreign Military Assistance funding redirected from Europe and the Middle East. This move, along with the agreement with Venezuela for a 35-percent U.S. stake for aiding the development of Venezuela’s languishing oil industry, have drawn fire from Democrats.
But trade and investment in economic development hold the greatest promise for a united Western Hemisphere. True, the U.S. trades more with hemispheric nations than with Europe, but the lion’s share is still with Canada and Mexico, nations least aligned with Trump policies.
China, which has built 37 ports in the region, remains the largest goods-trading partner of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Peru and other Latin American nations. Chinese companies have invested more than $21 billion in Chile alone since 2006 and now owns two Chilean electricity distributors.
U.S. tariffs of 12.5 percent on 40 percent imports (affecting 943 Chilean products) are a second impediment to greater U.S.-Chilean cooperation, even though the U.S. relies on Chile for over half of its imports of copper and lithium. Chile is also among the top three producers of rhenium and molybdenum – two other critical minerals for which the U.S. relies heavily on imports.
The U.S. and Chile in March signed a “Joint Declaration for the Establishment of Consultations on Critical Minerals and Rare Earth Elements.” Chile may also benefit from a Trump mandate that in 2025 unleashed $1 billion from the International Development Finance Corporation and $14.1 billion from the Export-Import Bank to finance upstream critical minerals projects.
Fujimori’s election in Peru has already led U.S. Ambassador Bernie Navarro to organize a “Peru is Open for Business” trade mission to the U.S., and the DFC is actively seeking investment opportunities in energy, infrastructure, critical minerals, and other priority sectors.
Last month the U.S. hosted an AI Summit in Lima, and under an earlier MOU the U.S. and Peru are establishing a critical minerals working group. Peru is also partnering with the U.S. to expand civil, commercial, and defense related space cooperation that includes jointly developing a space consortium to grow Peru’s space economy.
In January, the Inter-American Development Bank Group and Bolivian authorities agreed on a $4.5 billion package to support President Paz’s agenda to stabilize the economy, restore growth, and expand job creation. These reforms should make Bolivia a more favorable target for U.S. investment, according to the State Department – but Paz inherited an essentially state-run economy that remain inefficiently managed.
Bolivia had not had full diplomatic ties with the U.S. for the past 17 years, but President Paz has opened the mining sector and its vast resources of lithium, silver, and tin to U.S. corporate interests. The two nations in April signed a MOU on critical minerals, and Bolivia is working to create a new mining code to address legal certainty, institutionalization, commercialization, illegal mining, and environmental protection.
In September, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency signed an agreement with ARCONEL, Ecuador’s electricity regulatory agency, to fund technical assistance toward development of recommendations for regulations and procedures, building on recent legal reforms that have opened the door to greater private sector participation in the nation’s economy.
These and various other U.S. initiatives with newly elected Latin American leaders, along with many others with nations already aligned with the U.S., are signs that the Trump administration – with Secretary Rubio taking the lead — is serious about bolstering economic development and trade in the Western Hemisphere.
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The post The DonMarco Doctrine moves forward was first published by the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), and is republished here with permission. Please support their efforts.