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The United States convened its first multilateral summit with Latin American heads of state since the second Trump administration began. Twelve countries attended. Brazil and Mexico, the region’s two largest economies, did not. Neither did Colombia, the traditional linchpin of US counter-narcotics strategy. The absence list matters more than the guest list.
The “Shield of the Americas” summit, held at Trump National Doral in Miami on Saturday March 7, was framed by the White House as a counter-cartel security initiative. Trump signed a proclamation creating the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition and urged attending leaders to deploy their militaries against drug trafficking organizations. Secretary of State Marco Rubio led a working lunch. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attended. Kristi Noem, removed as Homeland Security Secretary days earlier, was introduced in a new role as Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas, according to the State Department transcript. The attendee list, per ABC News, included Argentine President Javier Milei, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa, Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino, Chilean President-elect Jose Antonio Kast and the leaders of Bolivia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Honduras, Paraguay and Trinidad and Tobago.
The security framing, however, obscures the more consequential dimension of the gathering. This was the first operational deployment of the “Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine,” the administration’s national security strategy aimed squarely at reducing Chinese economic influence in the Western Hemisphere. And by that measure, the summit exposed both the ambition and the limits of Washington’s approach.
The Economic Stakes Behind the Security Language
China’s trade with Latin America reached a record $518 billion in 2024, with Beijing having loaned more than $120 billion to governments across the hemisphere, according to a pre-summit analysis published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Those investments have produced a network of more than three dozen Chinese-operated ports, more space infrastructure than any region outside mainland China, and state-owned Huawei embedded in at least a dozen telecommunications networks across the region. Trade increased a further 7% in 2025, much of it in sectors where Chinese industrial overcapacity has produced dumping concerns, per the same CSIS assessment.
The Trump administration’s counter-strategy, as outlined in the 2025 National Security Strategy and the reciprocal trade agreements already signed with Argentina, Ecuador, El Salvador and Guatemala, includes explicit counter-China clauses. Some of those clauses extend beyond trade into areas such as space cooperation, per CSIS. The administration has signalled interest in expanding economic engagement. CSIS, in its pre-summit analysis, proposed an “Americas Infrastructure Compact” of $50 to $100 billion, a US-backed alternative to Belt and Road Initiative projects in the region, potentially channelled through the US International Development Finance Corporation for ports, highways, energy grids and telecommunications networks.
The problem is scale. Argentina illustrates the tension. The country received a $20 billion bailout from the United States, but as Benjamin Gedan of the Wilson Center told NPR, “you just cannot wish China away.” China remains one of the largest sources of capital for the region and one of its most important buyers of commodities. Milei has aligned with Washington ideologically, but Argentine soybean exports still flow overwhelmingly to Chinese ports. Economic dependency does not respect political alignment.
Who Was Not in the Room
The absences define the summit’s limitations more clearly than the attendees define its ambitions. Brazil, the region’s largest economy and a BRICS member with deepening ties to Beijing, was not invited or chose not to attend. Mexico, the second-largest economy and the United States’ most important trade partner in the hemisphere, was not present. Trump described Mexico as “the epicenter of cartel violence” and said the cartels are “running Mexico,” according to the Associated Press. Colombia, under leftist President Gustavo Petro, was also absent.
The gathering emerged from the collapse of the 10th Summit of the Americas, which was scrapped in late 2025 after the Dominican Republic, under White House pressure, barred Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela from attending. When Colombia and Mexico threatened to pull out in protest and Trump declined to commit to attending, the Dominican Republic postponed the event, citing “deep differences” in the region, according to the AP. The Shield of the Americas was assembled from what remained: a coalition of right-leaning governments willing to align with Washington on security and, implicitly, on distancing from Beijing. Notably, Trump himself made no mention of China during his remarks, according to the AP, even as the counter-China architecture underpinning the initiative remained its most significant policy dimension.
CSIS noted that the attendance list could expand if upcoming elections in Colombia and Peru produce right-leaning governments, and that future iterations could potentially include Brazil. But for now, the summit represents a minority of Latin American economic output. Without Brazil and Mexico, the economic leverage of the coalition is limited. The counter-China strategy requires the cooperation of precisely the countries that were not in the room.
The Timing and the Signal
The summit took place one week into the US-Israeli war on Iran. Trump opened his remarks by discussing the conflict, telling the assembled leaders that “tremendous progress” has been made, per ABC News. He then departed for Dover Air Force Base to attend the dignified transfer of six US troops killed in Kuwait. The juxtaposition was not lost on the region. NPR’s Franco Ordoñez noted that Trump cancelled his attendance at the 2018 Summit of the Americas because of a crisis in Syria, a move widely interpreted as evidence of the administration’s lack of sustained interest in the hemisphere.
The economic signal is mixed. The administration is offering real incentives: trade agreements with counter-China clauses, potential infrastructure financing through the DFC, military cooperation frameworks, and diplomatic attention that Latin American leaders rarely receive from a US president. The complication is timing. Washington is simultaneously fighting a war in the Middle East that has pushed global oil prices above $90, raised energy costs for every oil-importing economy in the hemisphere, and created exactly the kind of macroeconomic instability that drives developing nations toward whichever partner offers the most capital with the fewest conditions. That partner, historically, has been China.
Cuba, which Trump said is “in its last moments of life as it was,” has no money, no oil and limited options. But for the larger economies of the region, the choice between Washington and Beijing is not ideological. It is transactional. And as long as China remains the largest buyer of Brazilian soybeans, Argentine lithium and Chilean copper, no security summit in Miami will fundamentally alter that calculus. The Monroe Doctrine, in any form, requires an economic offer that matches the strategic ambition. Whether the Trump Corollary delivers one remains the open question of the hemisphere.
