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Latin America’s Diplomacy: Balancing EU and China With Mercosur

By Alvaro Mendez and Chris Alden The negotiations for the EU-Mercosur Free Trade Agreement (FTA) have spanned over two decades and are now facing renewed delays. This prolonged process is a crucial moment in Latin America's trade policy, especially as Brazilian ...

China Bolsters Ties With Uruguay in a Bid to Diversify Its Economic Relations in South America

China is moving to bolster its diplomatic ties in South America in a bid to pressure one of the region's lone holdouts that still recognizes Taiwan and diversify its trade beyond the continent's major powers. Uruguayan President Luis Alberto Lacalle Pou ...

Lula Pitches South American Trade Pact With China in Bid to Save Mercosur

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called for a South American regional trade agreement with China as part of a desperate bid to save the embattled Mercosur bloc. Lula proposed the idea during a speech on Wednesday in the Uruguayan capital of ...

Pressure Mounting on Biden to Counter China’s Free Trade Push in South America

Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso's visit to Washington this week prompted urgent calls from Capitol Hill for the President to do more to counter China's growing influence in South America. Lasso met with Biden on Monday at the White House with a nearly-done Chinese ...

Uruguay’s Free Trade Talks With China and Desire to Enter Pacific Trade Pact Upsets Regional Neighbors

Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou came under intense criticism from fellow leaders within the South American trading bloc known as Mercosur earlier this month over his government's moves to strike a free trade agreement with China and to enter the Trans-Pacific Partnership (aka CPTPP) trade ...

Analysis from Cobus van Staden

2026: Africa-China Relations in a World Shaped by North-South Geopolitics

When talking about Africa–China relations, one is always moving along a sliding scale. There are myriad interactions with Chinese entities that concern only individual African countries, segueing into trends affecting the whole continent and sliding further into global dynamics shaping the developing world, of which Africa is the heart.

The Africa-China relationship is its own thing, but Africa’s fate can’t easily be separated from factors affecting the wider Global South, ...

Free Trade Agreements, China and the Art of Small State Diplomacy

By Jorge Heine The story goes that during the negotiation of the China-Chile free trade agreement (FTA) in 2005, Chile was keen to include wine, one of its leading export products, in the list of duty-free items, but China was reluctant ...

China’s Overseas Fishing Fleet and the Global South

by Chris Alden and Sérgio Chichava While much of the Western attention is focused on the grey zone activities pursued by Chinese fishing fleets and their purported role in the strategic expansion of China’s interests in the South China Sea, less ...

China Ramps Up LatAm Diplomacy Weeks Before U.S. Summit

With the U.S. Summit of the Americas set to get underway in Los Angeles in two weeks, China appears to be stepping up its own diplomacy in Latin America. Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Friday held talks with his counterparts from Uruguay, Ecuador, and Nicaragua. ...

WEEK IN REVIEW: African officials Concerned about the Deteriorating Value of the Chinese Yuan

Finance officials in Africa and other emerging markets are becoming increasingly concerned about the deteriorating value of the Chinese yuan that's weighing down the value of their currencies. The RMB has fallen steeply over the past two weeks in response to the disruption of factory production, trade, and ...