Trump’s ‘Donroe Doctrine’ and China are headed for Latin America clash

Conversations in Washington right now are filled with talk of President Donald Trump’s new National Security Strategy and its so-called “Donroe Doctrine” framework for Western Hemisphere dominance, a modern-day corollary of the Monroe Doctrine. This debate was already simmering in policy circles before the end of last year, but was further fueled by the latest US operation in Venezuela. The familiar question resurfaced almost immediately: What will China do now?

Much of this speculation has focused on Taiwan. Will Beijing use kinetic US action in Venezuela as justification or precedent to take action against the island? This question can be understandable and relevant to its consequences. However, many people also believe that this is the wrong question to ask.

China will not use Venezuela as an excuse to invade Taiwan. That’s not how Beijing thinks, nor is it how it operates. A serious analysis requires setting aside the distraction of viewing China as a reactive power and engaging with a more important – and far more troubling – question. This requires us to read and discuss China’s own strategic documents regarding our region with the same rigor now applied to the US National Security Strategy, and to take them seriously on their own terms.

China’s new release The third Policy Paper on Latin America and the Caribbean is not a press release or a reactive and reflexive impulse triggered by Washington. This is a long-standing, well-thought-out, forward-looking and consciously structured approach for China to achieve its long-term goals. It includes the tools of statecraft he plans to use and the ways he plans to maintain his influence. It is an institutional scheme, dense with political mechanisms, funding avenues, commercial incentives, and a theory of the legitimacy of its involvement and presence in the region based on Global South solidarity rather than overt claims to regional hegemony or 18th-century cosplay.

NSS He is clear about his intentions. It commits the United States to keeping the hemisphere free from “hostile foreign attack or possession of significant assets,” ensuring access to “key strategic locations,” and denying non-hemispheric rivals control over “strategically vital assets.” In this sense, Venezuela becomes a proof point: proof that Washington is ready to act kinetically to change political realities in situations where it believes access, stability, or strategic positioning are at risk.

But Trump NSS also reveals a central analytics vulnerability. It implicitly assumes that the United States can grant spheres of influence (cede a region here and consolidate another there) and that the so-called “regional powers” will accept this arrangement. China does not see itself as a regional power. It sees itself as a global power with global interests, ambitions, investments and supply chain demands, and with an organization to defend and expand those interests in America’s so-called backyard. NSS may declare one consequence of this; It cannot ignore the existence or objectives of another great power, especially a power as deeply rooted in the hemisphere as China. China’s Latin America strategy is designed to be resilient to precisely such cyclical shocks.

How does China exert its influence around the world?

Start with political architecture. Beijing does not limit its interests to trade or hydrocarbons, although these are of great importance to Beijing. Instead, it pursues deep institutional embedding through CELAC, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, a 33-nation regional political bloc that coordinates head-of-state diplomacy, intergovernmental committee exchanges, inter-legislative exchanges, political party participation, and cooperation across trade, finance, infrastructure, technology, and people-to-people ties. The goal is clear: institutionalize influence along “multi-level, multi-channel” pathways with a structure that would dilute any single US pressure point campaign. It is much more difficult to “translate” a region where influence is so deeply felt through presidents, parties, parliaments, technocrats, students, consumers, and subnational actors simultaneously.

The economy strengthens this architecture. China frames its participation—whether true or not—as co-production and co-dependence rather than exploitation or philanthropy. The strategy emphasizes infrastructure connectivity, logistics management, digital infrastructure, smart cities, industrial parks, cooperation in production and export support. These projects create local constituencies: employment, contracts, port throughput, wages and broad political stakes in the region. Financial cooperation makes the model even sweeter through local currency settlement, RMB swap arrangements, credit and debit swap lines, and even Panda bonds offered. The goal is simple: reduce exposure to U.S. financial leverage, political pressure points, and sanctions risk over time.

Trump’s push for U.S. oil companies to invest in Venezuela offered a series of security guarantees but surfaced a familiar constraint: Executives emphasized that investment was also contingent on long-term financing, risk sharing, and enforceable contracts (support that China routinely provides through policy banks and export credits); Washington has not yet signaled a clear willingness to implement similar tools through the US International Development Finance Corporation. (DFC), Ex-Im Bank or multilateral finance.

And these means of financial support and assistance should not be pursued in a vacuum; When implemented well, they are designed to anchor impact on physical strategic assets (natural resources, ports, logistics centres, energy infrastructure and transit corridors) where economics and geopolitics inevitably intersect.

$500 billion trade, Panama Canal conflict

Scale matters. China-Latin America trade exceeds $500 billion in 2024, and the region represents more than 670 million consumers; Many of them prefer Chinese products due to price, availability and ever-increasing quality. These are not marginal markets. These are structural to China’s global growth model and export strategy.

Beijing is also frank—albeit selective—about its interest in strategic resources. Energy and critical minerals also feature, along with language regarding long-term supply arrangements and local currency pricing. Access extends across the value chain from extraction to use. For U.S. policymakers, investors, and CEOs, this is the business backbone that NSS must deal with. This isn’t about nostalgia for the Monroe Doctrine; it is a 21st century strategy designed to achieve many of the same results with more modern tools and more seductive rhetoric.

The Panama Canal brings these strategies into direct conflict. China’s policy document treats ports, logistics, and maritime cooperation as first-order tools of development and influence and as secret strategic assets that can be used in the event of a crisis, a military conflict with the regional hegemon (the United States). The NSS, meanwhile, clearly marks “key strategic locations” and acknowledges how commercial infrastructure could be repurposed for military use. Where these approaches collide most sharply is Panama (more so than Venezuela). Ongoing disputes over port privileges and terminal control underscore that both Washington and Beijing view the canal itself and the assets adjacent to it as strategic, not merely commercial.

So, will US action in Venezuela change the calculus? In the long run, no.

For Chinese firms, regional leaders and global companies caught between compliance regimes, it will increase risk premiums for many, complicate logistics and supply chains and further weaponize market access. This will force some governments to hedge more carefully, demand higher “insurance” from Beijing or seek stronger economic and security assurances from Washington. But that doesn’t erase the foundations China has spent two decades building: trade corridors, credit relationships, political networks and now a clear push toward high-tech cooperation, from electric vehicles, artificial intelligence and satellites to aviation and digital commerce, aligning close to where many Latin American economies want to go.

Zoom out one more level and the logic extends north. Greenland and the Arctic are not separate conversations; these are the same set of arguments, just on ice. Washington surrounds Greenland through mines, shipping lanes, and military access. Beijing frames the Arctic as an international space with global interests, governed by international law, in which non-Arctic states have legitimate interests. If the United States believes that regions can be secured through doctrine plus decisive action, China’s operational assumption is the opposite. He believes in stepping back and focusing on the arguments the United States has used for decades to justify its presence in the Asia-Pacific region: that states have global commons rights, that major states have global interests that must be protected, and that a long-term and well-established permanent presence in a region must be respected. China takes the same positions on Latin America and Greenland.

Action in Venezuela shows that the Trump administration is more serious than its predecessors about reasserting its dominance in the hemisphere, and that the NSS is not just rhetoric. But China will not rush to exits in the Western Hemisphere. It is deeply entrenched. Small powers also have authority. These orders will not be carried out without richer incentives, protections, or more sustained pressure than a single special forces operation can provide.

If Washington wants a hemisphere that chooses the United States rather than submits to it, it must compete with China’s full-scale approach: finance, infrastructure, technology, people-to-people exchanges, affordable products, political outreach, and a compelling partnership narrative. A declaration in the NSS and a dramatic operation are short-term events. China’s involvement in Latin America is a long game, and the competition it stimulates will be neither quick nor simple.

—With Dewardric McNealLongview Global Managing Director and Senior Policy Analyst and CNBC Contributor