|  ElCiudadano.cl |  Noticias

El Ciudadano

Original article: Chile en el fuego cruzado: Cómo la rivalidad entre EEUU y China define el gobierno Kast

By Leopoldo Lavín Mujica

As the Chilean Congress debates José Antonio Kast’s neoliberal package known as the Reconstruction Law, there is little discussion about the President’s international political and economic decisions, and media coverage is scant and often misinformed. This issue is fundamentally about sovereignty.

On March 12, 2026, his first full day as President, Kast signed a joint declaration with the United States concerning critical minerals and rare earths, a move that did not go unnoticed in Beijing. Chile is the world’s largest copper producer and holds about one-third of the global lithium reserves.

Regarding rare earths—the 17 chemical elements crucial for electronics, electric vehicles, and robotics—Chile’s reserves are minimal, yet the agreement falls under a broader strategic cooperation framework that Washington is replicating across Latin America today.

The political message was immediate and unambiguous: Chile aligns with Washington in the most significant dispute of the century, and it does so quietly, with little input from the public or discussion in Congress.

The agreement was signed at the La Moneda Palace by Foreign Minister Francisco Pérez MacKenna and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, in the presence of Kast. Its official title is «Joint Declaration for the Establishment of Consultations on Critical Minerals and Rare Earths.»

While the declaration is non-binding and does not require specific mineral export quantities, it establishes a framework for technical bilateral consultations aimed at strengthening supply chains, identifying priority projects, and exploring financing mechanisms.

The first round of consultations is scheduled for 15 days after the signing. Analyst Matías Pinto from GeoGig Consulting commented, «We are not just looking at a mining issue, but an early decision by Kast’s government to approach the United States.»

The challenge is that China has been deeply embedded in Chile longer than anywhere else in Latin America, and no signed declaration from La Moneda will change that overnight.

Beijing purchases 75% of Chile’s copper and similar proportions of its lithium, controls 60% of the country’s electrical distribution, and 40% of the vehicles on Chilean streets are Chinese-made. It is the destination for 90% of Chile’s cherry exports. Furthermore, Chinese company Tianqi is a strategic partner of SQM, Chile’s largest lithium producer.

Kast aims to draw closer to Trump, but the Chilean economy cannot afford a break with Beijing. This is the tightrope he is set to walk over the next four years, and Chileans have a right to know.

How Chile Arrived at This Point

The tension did not begin on the day of signing. In the weeks preceding Kast’s assumption of office, the outgoing government of Gabriel Boric approved a concession for the Chinese state company China Mobile International to install and operate a submarine fiber optic cable between Hong Kong and the Valparaíso region for 30 years.

Washington reacted immediately by revoking the visas of three Chilean officials, including Transport Minister Juan Carlos Muñoz, accusing the project of compromising regional security.

The scandal poisoned the transition of power. Boric and Kast accused each other of a lack of transparency. U.S. Ambassador Brandon Judd announced the end of the Chinese project during Kast’s inauguration: «We know that the owner of this cable is not Chile, it belongs to another country. Sovereignty will be compromised,» he declared in front of cameras. While Chilean media covered the spectacle of the inauguration, the substance of that declaration was almost entirely overlooked.

However, the cable was not the only Chinese project that Chile blocked under U.S. pressure. In the Atacama Desert, at over 3,000 meters above sea level, Chilean authorities halted the construction of a Chinese astronomical observatory that was to include 100 telescopes for monitoring asteroids and extragalactic explosions. A road was opened to reach the lunar landscape of Atacama for this site. Today, it leads to nowhere.

Bernadette Meehan, the U.S. ambassador to Chile during the Biden administration, openly acknowledged that stopping that project was «one of her most urgent priorities.» «It was very important for the U.S. government that it was not authorized,» she stated. In Chile, this admission of direct intervention in sovereign decisions generated less debate than it deserved.

Experts identified the same risk presented by the observatory, which concerns Washington throughout the region: that facilities presented as scientific could be used for military purposes, to track U.S. satellites or to communicate with the Chinese. The Chinese embassy in Santiago responded by denouncing «a purely simple manifestation of hegemonism» by the U.S. Two powers contesting Chilean territory, with Chilean resources as the prize. Meanwhile, Congress was discussing other matters.

What Washington Wants from Chile

The reason for U.S. pressure is precise: it needs Chilean copper and lithium to reduce its dependence on China in the critical minerals supply chain, without which its tech industry, energy transition, and defense industry cannot function.

Chile is not a chosen partner for ideological affinity or historical friendship. It is selected because it has what Washington needs and because, at this moment, it has a President willing to provide it.

Additionally, Chile is part of a series of similar agreements the Trump administration signed with 11 Latin American countries, including Argentina, Paraguay, and Ecuador. The pattern is clear: the U.S. is constructing a network of mineral alliances in Latin America that serves as both an economic strategy and a means to contain China’s influence in the Western Hemisphere, which the Trump administration refers to as the «updated Monroe Doctrine.» Chile has accepted this role without its citizens being consulted about the conditions, compensations, or long-term consequences.

What China Is Not Willing to Yield

However, Beijing does not observe passively. Its presence in Chile is too deep and too profitable to retreat without resistance.

Chinese companies do not just buy raw materials: they build solar and wind farms, provide solar panels, and dominate the electric vehicle market, including the buses that roam the country’s major cities. They control 60% of the national electric distribution. They finance infrastructure. They buy fruit, wine, and wood. China is not a distant and dispensable partner for Chile: it is the buyer sustaining entire sectors of its economy.

Foreign Minister Pérez MacKenna has publicly stated that Kast’s approach to Washington does not imply cooling relations with Beijing. This is a diplomatically understandable position. However, the facts from the early months of his government point in another direction, and the question that no one clearly poses is this: How far is Kast willing to go with Washington before China decides to respond?

The Same Dilemma in Argentina, This Week in Beijing

Chile is not the only stage in this silent war. In Argentina, a Chinese radio telescope worth 32 million dollars is blind to the sky in the Andes of San Juan. Its final parts have been held at Buenos Aires port customs for nine months, blocked by sustained pressure from Washington, which began with Biden and continued with Trump.

Experts from the Sandia Laboratory of the Department of Energy traveled to Buenos Aires to explain to Argentine officials the «dual-use risks» of the project. The bilateral trade agreement signed with Argentina included explicit language requiring assurance of the «exclusively civil use» of space facilities operated by third countries.

«We are trapped in a political black hole,» said Ana María Pacheco, a 61-year-old Argentine astronomer who saw her scientific project become collateral damage in a dispute that was never hers.

This week, all this accumulated tension reaches its most visible moment: Donald Trump flies to Beijing to meet Xi Jinping in the first visit of a U.S. President to China in nearly ten years. The agenda includes trade, the crisis in Iran, the Taiwan question, and the arms race in artificial intelligence. But it also encompasses, according to government sources, China’s relations in Latin America.

Trump will be accompanied by executives from Nvidia, Apple, Boeing, and Citigroup. China is putting a possible order for 500 Boeing 737 Max planes on the table and the possibility of maintaining open rare earth supply chains: the same leverage it employs in South America, it also uses against Washington.

The power game is perfect: the U.S. pressures Chile to limit Chinese presence in its territory, yet simultaneously needs China to obtain the rare earths without which its own industry cannot operate. In this game of mutual hostages, Chile is both the game board and the piece. And most Chileans are unaware of it.

Kast’s Tightrope

Ideologically aligned with Trump and Milei, Kast traveled after his election to visit Nayib Bukele in El Salvador and Viktor Orbán in Budapest. He attended a summit of like-minded Latin American leaders organized by Trump in Miami to halt Chinese advances in the region. Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not wait to solidify ties with the new Chilean government. All signs point to a clear alignment with Washington.

But governing Chile is not the same as campaigning. The country that Kast inherited on March 12 is one where China is present in the electricity that powers homes, in the cars that travel the streets, in the ports through which copper is shipped, and in the capital that finances lithium mining. Displacing that presence cannot be achieved with a joint declaration signed in La Moneda one March day, while Congress discusses the Reconstruction Law and the media looks elsewhere.

The question Chile should be asking today is not whether Kast is right to approach Washington. It is a deeper and more urgent question: Who decides, on behalf of Chile, to whom we sell our copper and lithium, who controls our electricity, what cables run along our coasts, and what telescopes are installed in our deserts?

For now, those decisions are being made by others. And Congress is discussing something else.

Leopoldo Lavín Mujica

Sources: The New York Times (Emma Bubola and Edward Wong, May 10, 2026) · The Guardian (Amy Hawkins and David Smith, May 10, 2026) · Bloomberg/Bloomberg Línea (Patricia Garip and James Attwood, March 11, 2026) · EFE, March 12, 2026; Diario Financiero, March 12, 2026; Radio Universidad de Chile, March 12, 2026; Swissinfo/EFE, March 12, 2026; La Silla Rota, March 12, 2026; Infobae, April 2026.

La entrada Chile Caught in the Crossfire: How US-China Rivalry Shapes Kast’s Government se publicó primero en El Ciudadano.