Foreign & Public Diplomacy

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa visits China, Venezuela’s interim government agrees to a prisoner release amid U.S.-brokered talks with the opposition, and Brazil’s state oil company makes a new oil discovery.

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa visits China, Venezuela’s interim government agrees to a prisoner release amid U.S.-brokered talks with the opposition, and Brazil’s state oil company makes a new oil discovery.

Ecuador’s Economic Lifeline?

Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa is on a weeklong state visit to China, his second trip to the country since the start of his term last year.

The right-wing president has embraced a close partnership with the Trump administration, which in word and deed is pushing back against Chinese economic ties in Latin America. But despite that pressure, Noboa is trying to shore up relations with Beijing, advancing Ecuador’s participation in the Belt and Road Initiative and seeking more trade and investment from China.

Ecuador is “a friend on the other side of the Pacific that you can count on,” Noboa said in Beijing this week.

Ecuador’s struggle to stimulate economic growth helps explain its continued engagement with both Beijing and Washington.

China-Ecuador bilateral trade has increased since a free trade deal between the two countries took effect in 2024. In the first half of this year, it was 20 percent higher than during the same period last year, according to Chinese government statistics.

Ecuador’s bilateral trade with the United States also increased over the same period, by 13 percent. The Trump administration imposed duties on Ecuador as part of its global tariff regime, some of which remain in place after negotiators from both countries agreed to exemptions in March. U.S. tariffs likely kept Ecuador’s exports to the United States from growing even more, according to analyst Sebastián Hurtado of Quito-based consultancy Prófitas.

Economic growth was not Noboa’s top campaign promise. During his two successful presidential runs in a 2023 snap election and 2025 general election, his main pitch to voters was that he would use a hard-line security strategy to reduce gang violence, which had soared after the COVID-19 pandemic amid battles for control of drug routes.

But Noboa has now been in office for nearly three years, and homicides in Ecuador remain near historic highs. “The lack of progress on security is a key threat to the........

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