Chile’s Kast courts China day after US hits exports with forced labour tariff

Chilean President Jose Antonio Kast received China’s ambassador to Santiago, Niu Qingbao, at the La Moneda Palace on Friday morning, in an encounter that lasted more than an hour and marked the first meeting between the two men since the right-wing leader took office in March. According to the presidency, Kast, Foreign Minister Francisco Perez Mackenna and Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Patricio Torres used the meeting to review their bilateral agenda, the minister’s coming trip to China and the preparations for the president’s participation in the Apec leaders’ meeting, to be held from November 18-19 in Shenzhen. Kast sat down with the ambassador a day after the US Trade Representative (USTR) confirmed a 12.5 per cent tariff on Chilean imports, a measure the agency justified by what it called Chile’s failure to prohibit imports produced with forced labour. The levy, which also covers 59 other trading partners, took effect on Friday and leaves out copper, the country’s largest export, while affecting the salmon, timber and food industries. The USTR first proposed it on June 3, opening a window for the Chilean foreign ministry and the export associations to make their case. Santiago said in a statement that it would keep talking to the Trump administration to improve access conditions, including the exclusion of products it considers essential to the country’s export basket. The tariff has left Kast in much the same position he found himself in on his first day in office, caught between the two powers that dominate the Chilean economy. Kast uses Trump’s strategy to gain power, flatter US The president was elected in November with just over 58 per cent of the vote on a platform modelled closely on US President Donald Trump’s, promising a wall on the Bolivian border and a crackdown on crime he blamed on Venezuelan migrants. He also promised a closer alignment with Washington, and flew to Miami days before his inauguration to attend the launch of Trump’s Shield of the Americas initiative. That alignment was already in trouble by the time he reached La Moneda, the seat of the president of Chile, in March. Weeks before the end of his term, the outgoing left-wing president Gabriel Boric had quietly authorised the start of proceedings on an undersea fibre-optic cable managed by China Mobile International linking Chile directly to Hong Kong, 19,873km (12,348 miles) long and with a 30-year concession. Then Transport and Telecommunications Minister Juan Carlos Munoz signed the decree on January 27 and rescinded it two days later, citing typographical errors, after warnings from the American embassy. Washington did not consider the matter closed, and in late February US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced visa restrictions against three Chilean officials accused of supporting activities that compromised critical telecommunications infrastructure. The South China Morning Post confirmed at the time that Munoz, telecoms undersecretary Claudio Araya and Subtel head Guillermo Petersen were among those affected. Boric later acknowledged that he had personally ordered the reversal after receiving explicit threats from Washington, including the possibility of Chile losing its place in the US Visa Waiver Programme, the only South American country in the scheme. The dispute wrecked the handover between the two governments. Kast said he had not been properly briefed, dissolved the transition coordination task force after a 22-minute meeting with Boric, and announced an audit of ministerial communications. Niu defended the cable in public at the time, calling it a mutually beneficial idea and dismissing American claims about strategic risk as not grounded in fact. Chile exports 37 per cent of its goods to China, mainly copper, lithium, lemons and cherries, and imports a quarter of what it consumes from the Asian country, with bilateral trade reaching US$65.33 billion last year. The United States remains the largest source of foreign direct investment, with a cumulative portfolio of US$12.5 billion against China’s US$4.6 billion, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Friday’s meeting closed a week dominated by foreign affairs, in which the government attended the presidential handover in Peru, hosted South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, restored consular relations with Venezuela and filed a claim at the United Nations over part of the extended continental shelf around the Juan Fernandez archipelago. US tariff threat raises concerns in Santiago The tariff imposed by Washington has also unsettled parts of the governing coalition, with Agriculture Minister Jaime Campos and Defence Minister Fernando Barros both criticising the American decision in public. US ambassador to Chile, Brandon Judd, responded by warning that statements of that kind make trade negotiations harder, and the government moved to lower the temperature, insisting that the talks were being handled exclusively by the foreign ministry. Speaking to CNN Chile on Thursday night, Senator Arturo Squella, president of the Republican Party that Kast founded, said the tariff had shown how little Chile had got in return for courting Washington. “A huge effort has been put into having the best possible relations with the United States, only for them to pull some sort of forced labour claim out of a hat,” Squella told the broadcaster. “At the end of the day you draw your conclusions and you say, look, there was no interest here in even recognising and respecting what has been signed with Chile,” he added, calling on the foreign ministry to argue the case as far as necessary “so that the word that is written down, when it comes to respect for free trade and everything that goes with it, counts for something again”. Asked about Chinese interest in Chilean ports, Squella drew a distinction between ordinary trade and strategic assets, arguing that there are activities in which the country should be wary of capital or interested parties that do not answer to the national interest, and that Chile still lacks a protocol to deal with them. His assessment of the two powers was blunt once that caveat was out of the way. “If you ask me which one I would like to go deeper with, in terms of doctrine or of how a society should be run, obviously I see the United States as much closer,” Squella said. “But I have no recollection of China creating difficulties or failing to respect the rules of the game.” Squella said the episode had left him weighing what the relationship with Washington is worth in practice. “It seems there is not much point in making so much effort to have a good relationship if in the end they arrive and out of nowhere impose tariffs on us that hit us at the waterline, in activities that are fundamental to us.”

Chile’s Kast courts China day after US hits exports with forced labour tariff

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Chilean president, who campaigned on aligning Chile with Trump, meets Beijing delegation as his party claims Washington cannot be trusted

Chilean president, who campaigned on aligning Chile with Trump, meets Beijing delegation as his party claims Washington cannot be trusted