In 1823, President James Monroe warned European powers to stay out of the Americas. In 1904, Theodore Roosevelt asserted America’s right to intervene as a regional police power. And in 2025, nearly two centuries after Monroe’s original message, the second Trump administration unveiled its own update: the “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine.
Buried in the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) is a clause that has sent shockwaves through Latin America, Beijing, and Moscow. The United States will now actively deny “non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets” anywhere in the Western Hemisphere.
This is not a return to 19th-century isolationism. It is a 21st-century doctrine of hemispheric exclusion – aimed squarely at China and Russia.
From Good Neighbor to Gatekeeper
For much of the post-World War II era, the United States softened its unilateralist impulses in the Americas. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy (1933) renounced armed intervention. Multilateral agreements such as the 1933 Montevideo Convention, the 1947 Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (the Rio Treaty), and the 1948 Charter of the Organization of American States (OAS) enshrined nonintervention and collective self-defense as binding regional norms.
The United States ratified all of them.
Yet the Trump Corollary marks a sharp departure from that cooperative framework. Unlike the Roosevelt Corollary, which justified U.S. intervention to correct “chronic wrongdoing” by Latin American states, the Trump Corollary is externally focused. Its primary targets are not regional governments but extra-hemispheric powers – specifically the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Russian Federation.
The China Threat: Ports, 5G, and the Panama Canal
Why now? The reference document makes clear that U.S. concerns about extra-hemispheric influence had declined after the Cold War but have surged over the past decade – largely in response to China’s expanded engagement with Latin America and the Caribbean.
China has already surpassed the United States as the top trade partner for several South American nations, including Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay. Beyond trade, Beijing has emerged as a major source of foreign investment and development financing, funding everything from deepwater ports in Peru (Chancay) to 5G telecommunications networks across the region.
U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) and U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) have publicly warned that these investments – particularly in strategic infrastructure near military installations, space facilities, and the Panama Canal – could support PRC military objectives. The concern is not merely economic dependency but potential “dual-use” infrastructure: a Chinese-built port that today handles containers could, in a crisis, service naval vessels.
The Trump Corollary explicitly targets such scenarios. The State Department’s Agency Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2026-2030 goes even further, asserting that the United States will prevent and roll back extra-hemispheric control whether it “is exercised directly by competing powers or instead through purportedly private entities.” This is a direct shot at China’s state-owned enterprises and state-linked private firms that operate throughout the hemisphere.
Russia: The Secondary Front
Russia’s footprint in the Western Hemisphere is more limited than China’s, but it remains a concern. U.S. military leaders have expressed alarm over Russia’s Arctic activities – a region increasingly accessible due to climate change and contested by NORTHCOM – as well as Moscow’s close ties to authoritarian regimes in the region.
Venezuela and Nicaragua, in particular, host Russian military personnel, advisors, and intelligence assets. In 2018, Russian Tupolev Tu-160 bombers landed in Caracas during a period of heightened U.S.-Russia tensions – a symbolic but unmistakable demonstration of Moscow’s ability to project power into America’s traditional sphere of influence.
While most Latin American and Caribbean governments condemned Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, they have notably refused to join U.S.-led sanctions or transfer military equipment to Kyiv. This reluctance, according to the reference analysis, reflects a region-wide desire to avoid entanglement in great-power competition – a lesson learned from the Cold War, when U.S.-Soviet rivalry fueled civil conflicts, military coups, and widespread human rights abuses across Latin America.
The Regional Response: Pushback and Pragmatism
If the Trump administration expected a wave of enthusiasm for its new corollary, it has been disappointed. Latin American and Caribbean governments have largely downplayed U.S. concerns about Chinese influence and have welcomed Beijing’s capital flows and technology transfers with open arms.
This is not naivety. It is a deliberate strategy of multi-alignment – maintaining ties with the United States while deepening economic relationships with China. As one regional diplomat told Reuters (not for attribution), “Why would we choose sides when both powers offer us something valuable? Washington offers security. Beijing offers investment. We will take both.”
The Trump Corollary, however, treats multi-alignment as a threat. By threatening to deny “strategically vital assets” to extra-hemispheric powers, Washington is effectively telling its neighbors: You cannot sell your deepwater ports to China, even if it is a better deal. You cannot let Huawei build your 5G network, even if it is cheaper. You cannot host Russian advisors, even if they come with no political strings.
This puts Latin American governments in an impossible position. Their memories of U.S. intervention – 27 armed deployments between 1904 and 1933, including occupations of Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic – are still raw. The Trump Corollary, even in its externally focused form, evokes those ghosts.
Canada: The Quiet Exception
One regional power has already aligned with Washington’s approach: Canada. The Canadian government has taken significant steps to restrict PRC influence inside its borders, including blocking Chinese state-owned enterprises from critical mineral investments and probing Beijing’s interference in domestic politics. Yet Canada is the exception, not the rule. Most of Latin America and the Caribbean have opted for a different path – one of pragmatic openness, not strategic alignment.
What Comes Next?
The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine is still in its early stages. It remains unclear how aggressively the administration will enforce it. Will the United States impose secondary sanctions on Latin American firms that partner with Chinese state-owned enterprises? Will it seize Chinese-built ports under national security authorities? Will it expand military cooperation with partner nations to offset Chinese and Russian influence?
The reference document offers one clue: the U.S. State Department’s Agency Strategic Plan explicitly calls for “preventing and rolling back” extra-hemispheric control over strategic assets. That word – “rolling back” – suggests not just containment but reversal. Assets already under Chinese or Russian influence may be targeted for reacquisition.
For China and Russia, the Trump Corollary is a direct challenge. For Latin America and the Caribbean, it is an uncomfortable reminder of a past many had hoped was over. And for the United States, it represents a fundamental question: can the Monroe Doctrine be revived for a new era of great-power competition without reigniting the very resentments that led to its abandonment in the first place?
Nearly two centuries after Monroe warned Europe to stay out, the Trump administration is warning Beijing and Moscow to do the same. Whether the hemisphere listens – or resists – will define inter-American relations for a generation.
