Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.
The highlights this week: Copper prices soar amid growing global demand and U.S. tariff threats, Colombia and Ecuador have a trade spat, and Mexico’s president makes an unusual demand of a K-pop group.
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Latin American policymakers have long pitched potential investors and geopolitical partners on access to mineral riches. The region is home to many raw materials that are essential to the green transition, including lithium, which is used in batteries.
In recent years, the region’s lithium deposits have attracted investments and attention from the United States, Europe, and China. Lithium prices jumped more than sixfold from 2021 to 2023 amid a supply crunch, but they have since returned to prior levels.
Now, one mineral of the moment is copper. Due to global electrification and rising power usage, worldwide demand for copper is expected to outstrip supply by 30 percent by 2035, Jonathan Price of Teck Resources told FP’s Ravi Agrawal last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The Trump administration also imposed tariffs on some copper products in 2025 and said it might adjust them in 2026. As companies around the world stockpiled copper in anticipation of the levies, its price jumped to a record high this month.
Regardless of Trump’s eventual tariff, future global demand bodes well for the biggest copper-exporting countries, many of which are in Latin America. Chile was the world’s top exporter of raw copper in 2024 at more than $31 billion, followed by Peru. Brazil and Mexico also each exported at least $3 billion of the mineral that year, ranking fifth and sixth globally, respectively.
The copper price spike “is probably the best macroeconomic news we’ve had in recent times,” Chilean economist Cecilia Cifuentes said at an event in Santiago earlier this month. During a period of elevated copper prices from around 2005 to 2013, Chile’s and Peru’s economies boomed.
In Chile, right-wing President-elect José Antonio Kast is preparing to take office in March. He has pledged to slash regulations across the economy. Chile’s council of mining companies expects that the country’s copper output could rise in the first year or two of Kast’s presidency, though not as much as the 20 percent uptick that some on his team have estimated.
Peru’s forecasts are more conservative. Less new investment in copper is occurring than during the 2000s boom, Peruvian Institute of Economics General Manager Carlos Gallardo told Foreign Policy, citing a rise in illegal mining and problems with red tape as well as local protests against mining. Although Peru will elect a new president in April, Gallardo said that leading candidates have generally avoided going into detail about how to boost investment in the sector.
In neither Chile nor Peru do major industrial policies for the copper sector appear to be on the horizon. Such policies could encourage the manufacturing of value-added products such as copper wires or foils for electric grids—giving countries a larger slice of the green technology pie. While industrial policies don’t always yield their intended results, they are more viable when the ingredients in question are in high demand, as copper is now.
Countries such as Chile “hold a lot of very valuable cards in terms of either negotiating foreign direct investment or building out their copper capacity,” said minerals analyst Chris Berry of House Mountain Partners. In recent years, he added, private lithium companies have accepted requirements from the Chilean government that they hike royalty payments.
Chile’s progressive outgoing administration enacted an ambitious industrial policy for lithium, creating new permissions for private firms to mine untapped reserves if they worked together with state companies. President Gabriel Boric tried to encourage firms to process lithium in Chile instead of just mining it.
Chilean analyst Maximiliano Véjares of Johns Hopkins University’s Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab said that Boric’s policy notched some victories, including the creation of a public-private company that has a new license to mine for more than 30 years.
But the strategy also fell short on some of its goals. Chinese firms BYD and Tsingshan suspended plans to build lithium processing plants in 2025. Chilean officials cited falling lithium prices.
At least one Latin American government is trying to advance an industrial policy for copper. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration is pitchingthe country as a destination for copper wire and cable plants that could set up shop near existing copper mines—even as the government maintains a freeze on new mining concessions.
But in the year since Mexican officials have begun touting this strategy, no such plants have been announced. In Mexico, investors face both uncertainty over U.S. copper tariffs and about what Mexico’s trade deal with Canada and the United States will look like at the end of a review that is due to conclude by July.
Sunday, Feb. 1: Costa Rica holds general elections.
Tuesday, Feb. 3: Trump and Colombian President Gustavo Petro meet at the White House.
Acting Haitian Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé speaks in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Nov. 16, 2024.Clarens Siffroy/AFP via Getty Images
Haiti’s leadership limbo. The mandate for Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council (TPC) is set to expire on Feb. 7. The interim governing board was established after acting President Ariel Henry resigned in mid-2024 and was designed to hand over power to a newly elected leader, but elections have been delayed until this August.
Amid a lack of clear consensus about what Haiti’s leadership will look like in the interim, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week that he supported interim Prime Minister Alix Fils-Aimé staying on. Fils-Aimé was appointed by the TPC in 2024 but is separate from it.
Recent events suggest that the road to elections may be rocky. Five of the council’s nine members attempted to remove Fils-Aimé by vote last week, prompting public warnings from the United States, Canada, and the European Union.
Those interventions underscore how much outside actors continue to influence Haiti as it awaits the arrival of an estimated 5,500-person security force approved by the U.N. Security Council last year. The deployment is designed to help Haitian authorities wrest back territorial control from gangs.
Amid the government infighting of recent days, a U.N. envoy gave an estimated deployment date for the force: by summer, or fall at the latest.
Lula and Trump talk. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will travel to the White House in the coming weeks, he announced after a phone call with Trump on Monday. Lula said that both leaders hailed the positive relationship they have built in recent months—a significant turnaround after Trump announced 50 percent tariffs on Brazil last July.
The pair discussed Venezuela, Trump’s plan for his so-called Board of Peace, and cooperation against organized crime, Lula added. Brazil and the United States are also in talks on a rare-earths deal, the Financial Times reported.
Washington is looking to diversify its sources of rare-earths minerals following China’s squeeze on exports to the United States last year. Brazil is rich in them, and U.S. public and private investors have announced new agreements with Brazilian rare-earths producers in recent months.
Mexico wants más BTS. A recent communiqué from Sheinbaum to the South Korean government included an unusual request: more concerts across Mexico by K-pop sensation BTS.
The band has three Mexico City appearances booked on its upcoming tour, but they sold out in minutes. Sheinbaum said on Monday that she still had not received a response from Seoul on the matter but hoped its reply would be “positive.”
The musical diplomacy might also be an effort to maintain positive ties between the two countries following Mexico’s recent tariffs on multiple trade partners. While China was the most affected by those tariffs—which apply to all countries that Mexico has no free trade deal with—South Korea was hit, too.
South Korea’s musical soft power has long been a key diplomatic tool for the country. But South Korean diplomats in Latin America have also prided themselves on their ability to gain fluency in local music. Seoul’s samba- and pagode-singing former ambassador to Brazil made a splash in the country.
In addition to Mexico, which other Latin American country lacks a free trade deal with South Korea?
The countries have a bilateral trade and investment promotion agreement, but it falls short of broad tariff reductions that South Korea has established with several other Latin American countries.
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Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa gives a thumbs-up in Panama City on Jan. 28. Next to him Panamanian Foreign Minister Javier Martínez Acha.Arnulfo Franco/AFP via Getty Images
Political differences between Petro, a leftist, and center-right Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa spilled into a costly trade escalation in recent days.
Tensions kicked off with a social media post from Noboa on Jan. 21 that accused Petro of not doing enough to combat drug trafficking and illegal mining—echoing a frequent claim made by Trump, with whom Noboa has closely aligned. Noboa announced a 30 percent tariff on Colombian goods as a result.
Highlighting recent anti-drug actions taken by his government, Petro said he would respond reciprocally and ordered the suspension of Colombian electricity sales to Ecuador as well as 30 percent tariffs on certain Ecuadorian goods. Noboa hit back by hiking the fees for Colombian oil to pass through Ecuador from $3 to $300 per barrel.
Because Ecuador is more dependent on Colombian trade than vice versa, usually Colombia would have the upper hand in a spat like this, analyst Sebastián Hurtado wrote Thursday in Americas Quarterly, but Trump’s closeness to Noboa is a “wild card.”
So too are Trump’s anti-immigration policies: Noboa’s alignment with Washington did not stop Ecuador from formally protesting to the United States this week after an ICE agent attempted to enter the Ecuadoran consulate in Minneapolis.
As both Colombia and Ecuador stand to suffer heavy economic losses from the scuffle, Petro sought a mediated solution at a regional economic summit this week in Panama, calling for talks with Noboa.
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