“We often say that to get rich, we must first build roads; but in coastal areas, to get rich, we must also first build ports.” – Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the China Central Committee

The Chinese Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to develop CopiaPort-E, Chile’s deep-water port on the Pacific, raises national security questions given that Todd Callender, Esq., the CEO of the insurance conglomerate Cotswold Group in Barbados, would prefer to sell to the United States the rights to develop the port.* Is the Trump administration serious about protecting U.S. interests in the Western Hemisphere?

As reported in American Thinker, China covets ownership of CopiePort-E to serve as the Pacific Ocean landing pad for China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” in South America. The status quo is that the Trump administration is taking active steps to wrest control of the Panama Canal from China, even as China’s state-owned shipping giant, China Ocean Shipping Group (Cosco), in November 2024, purchased a 60 percent stake in Chancay, Peru, for $1.6 billion.

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The proposed CopiaPort-E location. YouTube screen grab.

That purchase means that China stands to gain a commanding position on Pacific shipping from South America should the Trump administration fail to act promptly to negotiate with Callender’s on a U.S. offer to develop CopiaPort-E. China’s military ambitions in South America also remain clear, given China’s resentment that Argentina’s President Javier Milei reversed his predecessors’ decision to establish a naval base near the Strait of Magellan. Milei decided, instead, to coordinate closely with the Trump administration to develop the base.

President Trump has brought the Monroe Doctrine into the 21st Century by suggesting that Canada can become the 51st state, Greenland must become a US protectorate, and the US must take back military control over the Panama Canal. Trump’s vision stretches across the Western Hemisphere, from the Arctic of Canada and Greenland to the Antarctic of Argentina.

CopiaPort-E has the natural advantage of two low-gradient mountain passes through the Andes that give........

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