For decades, the United States shaped the political and economic landscape of Latin America more than any other outside power. That era of quiet dominance is cracking. Surveys and economic data published in April 2026 show China’s favorability climbing across the region while U.S. approval has dropped into negative territory for the first time in recorded polling history.
The numbers come from the Democratic Perception Index, produced by the Alliance of Democracies Foundation, drawing on interviews with more than 110,000 people across 100 countries. The United States fell from a net positive rating of 22 percent in 2024 to minus five percent in 2025. Across the Western Hemisphere, nearly every country surveyed now rates China above Washington.
Trade data reinforces the trend. China has become the top trading partner for Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Argentina, and analysts expect Beijing to push further into the region through infrastructure loans, energy contracts, and technology deals in 2026.
How Washington Lost the Room
The Alliance of Democracies Foundation, led by former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has published its global approval index for years. The 2025 edition was the first to place the United States in net negative territory. Only 45 percent of the 100 nations surveyed recorded a positive view of Washington, down from 76 percent the year before.
Latin America drove much of that fall. Peru’s net score toward the United States landed at minus 28, Ecuador at minus 26, Mexico at minus 24. Canada, at minus 47, recorded the steepest drop in the hemisphere. Rasmussen attributed the collapse to Donald Trump’s second term, pointing specifically to broad tariff hikes, public clashes with longtime allies, and a diplomatic tone that put governments on edge across the region.
In Chile, a separate national poll placed China’s approval rating at 57 percent against 38 percent for the United States, a 14-point swing from the prior year.
Beijing Moves Into the Gap
China’s presence in Latin America has grown for two decades, but recent years have seen that growth accelerate in ways that were not true before. The consultancy Kreab, in its Latam 2026 political and regulatory report, found Beijing expanding beyond commodity purchases into financing deals that Western lenders have been slow or unwilling to match. Where the International Monetary Fund or U.S. development agencies attach conditions, China has offered more flexible terms, and several governments have taken them.
The Inter-American Development Bank identifies China as the region’s second-largest trading partner overall. In Brazil, Chinese foreign direct investment has at times accounted for 55 percent of all Chinese capital entering Latin America, according to the Monitor of Chinese Outward Foreign Direct Investment in Latin America and the Caribbean 2026. In Peru, accumulated Chinese investment between 2000 and 2022 surpassed 38 billion dollars, per the Center for China and Asia Pacific Studies at Universidad del Pacífico.
One project captures the strategic stakes clearly. Peru’s port of Chancay, built and operated by COSCO Shipping, has drawn sustained attention from Washington, which suspects the facility could serve military as well as commercial purposes. As CNN Español has reported, the port has placed Peru at the center of the U.S.-China contest for regional influence in a way few other infrastructure projects have.
Mexico as a Military Counterweight
A separate analysis looked at the military side of this regional shift, using global power index rankings to assess which country could most credibly complicate U.S. military options in the hemisphere. The answer was Mexico, ranked second in Latin America on the global military power index, ahead of both Argentina and Brazil.
Mexico’s military is built for territorial control: large ground forces, transport aircraft, helicopters, and a coastal naval presence across both the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific. Domestic arms production limits its reliance on outside suppliers. But the factor that no other Latin American country can replicate is geography. Mexico shares a land border with the United States, making it a trade corridor, a migration pressure point, and a strategic variable that sits at the edge of U.S. territory rather than thousands of miles from it.
No Easy Pivot for Either Side
What these data points add up to is a region managing two competing relationships at once rather than choosing between them. Governments across Latin America are using what Kreab’s analysts call economic diplomacy, extracting investment and financing from both Washington and Beijing without formally aligning with either.
The risks of that approach are real. Economists and security analysts have flagged concerns about debt exposure to Chinese lenders, over-reliance on commodity exports, and the national security questions raised by Chinese firms building telecommunications and port infrastructure. Washington has pushed back on Chinese involvement in 5G networks in several countries.
Those objections are not producing the intended effect. According to the Democratic Perception Index, 85 of the 100 countries surveyed rated China above the United States, a result the Alliance of Democracies Foundation links directly to the current U.S. trade and foreign policy posture under Trump. The foundation’s next full index update, expected later in 2026, will measure whether that gap holds or widens as tariff negotiations continue.
