When will the U.S. stop being China's chump in its own hemisphere? Not this week, apparently

COMMENTARY America is shocked to find it's playing catch-up with China on infrastructure, and influence, in the Americas. But little will change until President Trump chooses partnership over punishment.

Last month, a reliable source close to one of Latin America’s conservative governments told me big plans were afoot for a new hemispheric alliance, led by Washington, focused on development projects that would make the region turn away from China and embrace the U.S. once again.

I don’t doubt my source was indeed hearing that chatter from top Latin American officials — and that those officials were hearing it in turn from the Trump administration’s top Latin America officials. Nor do I doubt, as my source conveyed, that one of those U.S. honchos was Trump’s special envoy to Latin America, Miami’s own Mauricio Claver-Carone.

But I do doubt that abstract buzz will ever morph into concrete building — especially now that Claver-Carone is reportedly leaving the administration later this month, after less than four months in the job, for the private sector.

In fact, it’s a fitting coincidence that alongside news of Claver-Carone’s departure, we’re also digesting this week’s visit by several Latin American heads of state and ministers to Beijing. Far from shunning communist China, they basked in President Xi Jinping’s ramped-up largesse, including a $9.2 billion line of credit and infrastructure investment for the region.

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Meanwhile, back here in Miami, at Florida International University’s annual Hemispheric Security Conference, speaker after speaker warned of how communist China’s burgeoning economic and diplomatic incursion into the Western Hemisphere — and the concomitant spreading of its brutal, totalitarian ideology — could evolve into a military presence as well. That includes its allegedly growing military intelligence capacity inside Cuba.

Said Adm. Alvin Holsey, who heads the U.S. military’s Southern Command in Doral: “I think [China’s ]efforts to establish access to infrastructure projects … for potential military deployments — we should be very concerned about that, and make sure we have our [hemispheric] partners aligned with us as we go forward.”

Good advice. But the distressing truth is that America’s hemispheric partners are largely not aligned with Washington when it comes to the very real specter of Chinese influence in the Americas.

You’d think the U.S. response to China's growing footprint in Latin America and the Caribbean would be to ramp up its own largesse there. Think again.

Most are still too tantalized by Beijing’s massive Belt and Road Initiative — all the roads, bridges and ports it’s financing in the developing world, like the new $3.5 billion Puerto de Chancay in Peru — that they’re hardly as concerned as the gringos are about the geopolitical ramifications.

And that’s really nobody’s fault but Washington’s.

Ever since the turn of this century, U.S. administrations Republican and Democrat — including Trump’s first presidency — all but covered their eyes and ears to the big-money Sino-sortie.

Canal threats

But what’s astonishingly laughable now is that Washington is shocked — shocked! — to find China has forged an inordinate presence around strategic hemispheric locales like the Panama Canal, which handles 40% of U.S. maritime shipping traffic.

A cargo ship sits in the Chinese-funded port in Chancay, Peru, on Nov. 12, 2024. (5381x3587, AR: 1.500139392249791)

You’d think any White House’s response to that reality would be to ramp up its own largesse in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Think again. President Trump has ordered drastic cuts in U.S. development aid in the region, slapped onerous tariffs on small countries like Guyana — and threatened to seize control of the Panama Canal from Panama, perhaps by military force, as punishment for partnering with an attentive Beijing while Washington was AWOL.

Granted, it looked back in March as though Trump and the U.S. were finally taking the partnership instead of punitive route when a consortium led by the U.S. investment firm BlackRock agreed to buy two ports at either end of the Panama Canal from a private Chinese company, the Hong-Kong based CK Hutchison, in a $23 billion deal.

But Beijing has since halted the transaction, insisting it hurts China’s interests.

Sure, the U.S. can and should cry foul. Still, the aborted sale is a reminder of how badly — and inexcusably — Washington is playing catch-up with Beijing in its own global neighborhood.

And what’s really breathtaking to consider is how easy it could and should be for the U.S. to lure Latin America and the Caribbean away from China’s predatory financing, which often leaves lendee countries in cement shoes of debt.

Maybe Claver-Carone can address that situation more effectively when he returns to his own investment firm, the LARA Fund, which targets Latin America.

Maybe from that perch he can get the U.S. building in the hemisphere, instead of buzzing in the White House.