In Latin America, China Makes Its Mark

Finlay Lewis
CQ Weekly
May 2, 2011

Congress has been struggling for years with Latin America policy, and an emerging factor is adding a degree of urgency: China’s huge appetite for natural resources and basic commodities.

Trade statistics tell the story. From 2000 to 2008, Sino-Latin trade grew at a robust annual rate of 31 percent, while U.S. market share in the region’s top eight economies fell from 49 percent to 38 percent. China has supplanted the United States as the leading trading partner of Brazil and Chile, two of South America’s most important economies, while gaining ground in other key markets such as Argentina, Colombia and Peru...

...Indeed, the change in the power equation in Latin America resulting from China’s recently acquired prominence may be a rather subtle one. “The region has other options now. It’s not as though they are going to break with the United States. They’re not,” says Eric Farnsworth, a vice president of the Council of the Americas. “The automatic assumption we may have had, that if we’re not engaged with the region, well, we’ll be able to, is not necessarily something that will always be the case if we don’t pay attention to things that need to get done.”

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