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Jamestown Foundation Issues Commentary: U.S.-PRC Competition Enters New Phase in Central Asia
WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 -- The Jamestown Foundation issued the following commentary on Oct. 30, 2026, in the foundation's China Brief Notes:
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U.S.-PRC Competition Enters New Phase in Central Asia
Bradley Jardine | Edward Lemon
Executive Summary
* U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's recent visit to Uzbekistan marked Washington's most concrete push yet to compete with Beijing in Central Asia, especially on critical minerals and connectivity.
* Rubio emphasized that Washington would not force Tashkent to choose between the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC), unlike the ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 -- The Jamestown Foundation issued the following commentary on Oct. 30, 2026, in the foundation's China Brief Notes: * * * U.S.-PRC Competition Enters New Phase in Central Asia Bradley Jardine | Edward Lemon Executive Summary * U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's recent visit to Uzbekistan marked Washington's most concrete push yet to compete with Beijing in Central Asia, especially on critical minerals and connectivity. * Rubio emphasized that Washington would not force Tashkent to choose between the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC), unlike themore confrontational approach of the first Trump administration.
* U.S. outreach to Uzbekistan still trails PRC engagement. The PRC announced $60 billion in investment in Uzbekistan just before Rubio's visit, as compared to a possible $16 billion in deals signed during the U.S.-Uzbekistan meetings. The same lag appears in the U.S. priority sector of critical minerals. The United States imports around 2 percent of the region's critical minerals, while the PRC imports nearly 50 percent.
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Far from the geopolitical flashpoints of the Persian Gulf and Ukraine, double-landlocked Uzbekistan has become a new arena for competition between the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC). On October 20, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in Samarkand, accompanied by an American business delegation totaling over 200 people (Daryo, October 14). On the city's historic central square, Rubio said in his speech that "we're here now" to advance U.S.-Uzbekistan connectivity, just as the historic Silk Road brought global trade through the region (U.S. Embassy in the PRC, October 20).
The PRC has spent decades investing in reinvigorating the very trade routes Rubio invoked. He recognized in a response to a local journalist that "it's a competition," but that American businesses should "have a fair shot to compete" (U.S. Embassy in the PRC, October 20). Anticipating Washington's overtures, Beijing dispatched Premier Li Qiang to Tashkent three days before Rubio's speech. For the PRC, Uzbekistan is a critical partner in its efforts to connect Eurasia. For the United States, the region's potentially vast critical mineral deposits offer an opportunity to diversify supply chains and reduce its frontier technology sector's dependence on Chinese components (RFE/RL, October 21).
Competition Overshadows Other Interests
Rubio's visit marked a change in regional strategy since President Donald Trump's first term. In 2020, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo drew attention to the PRC's mistreatment of Uyghurs and Kazakhs as a potential wedge between Central Asia and the PRC (Current Time, February 2, 2020). Fears of this binary approach recently resurfaced in the summer when the State Department sought to force Kazakhstan to choose between the United States's Pax Silica initiative and PRC's World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (RFE/RL, September 17).
The October visit presented a less confrontational approach. Rubio acknowledged that "Uzbekistan has been clear that they want to be friends with everybody," but said that the United States does not wish to force Uzbekistan to stop talking to somebody else or stop working with some other country (U.S. Embassy in the PRC, October 20). This suggests a U.S. recognition that Central Asian governments have become more capable geostrategic players in their own right. They can now effectively wield leverage to gain favorable relations with a wider range of actors than at any point since the collapse of the Soviet Union, including among themselves (Times of Central Asia, September 23).
Washington is seeking to challenge Beijing's dominance in Central Asia in critical minerals. After a regional minerals dialogue in 2024 and a White House summit in 2025, the United States signed a new investment framework with Uzbekistan in February 2026, targeting mineral exploration, extraction, and processing, along with plans for a joint investment company (Reuters, February 18).
Rubio's visit was the next test of whether Washington could turn those ambitions into tangible investment. Nearly 300 representatives of American businesses accompanied him and announced potential deals worth around $12 billion (Kun, October 25). Local media reports that almost 54 agreements were signed, including plans involving GE Aerospace, railway equipment manufacturer Wabtec, financial institutions such as Citigroup and BlackRock, and companies active in mineral development (Gazeta, October 19). Surprisingly, the joint statement issued after the visit failed to mention critical minerals specifically.
The statement emphasized supporting the development of Central Asian economies. It singled out the U.S. goal of helping Central Asia achieve its "export potential" by "developing innovative ways to increase value-added products within the region and [create] pathways to introduce these products to the international market" (Department of State, October 19). It also added that the United States seeks to "foster a region where e-commerce flourishes, innovative solutions abound, and talented entrepreneurs thrive" by leveraging "secure and trusted technology, American technological excellence, and the growing technology sectors of Central Asia."
PRC-Central Asia Relations Exceed U.S. Outreach
Even if realized, U.S. investments trail significantly behind the $60 billion that the PRC promised three days before the highly anticipated U.S. visit (President of Uzbekistan, October 17). This disparity also shows up in the critical minerals sector. The United States imports just 2.1 percent of the region's critical minerals, according to the Oxus Society's Central Asia Resource Tracker, while the PRC imports almost 50 percent (Oxus Society, accessed October 26).
The pattern extends to broader trends in PRC-Central Asian trade, which topped $100 billion for the first time in 2025, of which Uzbekistan accounted for $16 billion (Xinhua, January 18). In the broader region, the PRC is also the largest trade partner for isolated Iran and Afghanistan (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, October 23, 2023).
* * *
Model of the BYD Car Factory in Jizzakh Free Economic Zone displayed in the Tashkent Islamic Civilization Center
* * *
Tashkent sees the PRC as being essential to its modernization. Beijing is investing in renewable energy and advanced manufacturing, and is spearheading major infrastructure projects such as the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway (Xinhua, October 18). During a recent visit to Tashkent, the authors saw how prominently these investments feature in the country's vision for the future. Inside the lavish, marble-clad, $150 million Center for Islamic Civilization, exhibits showcase Chinese-backed projects across Uzbekistan, including a scale model of BYD's auto factory in the southern Jizzakh region. The exhibits illustrated how much the Uzbek government is promoting the PRC's investments as part of its broader development ambitions.
During his meeting with Li Qiang on October 17, President Mirziyoyev described Uzbekistan-PRC relations as enjoying a "golden age," a phrase he had previously used in conversations with General Secretary Xi Jinping. He also reaffirmed Tashkent's support for the PRC's One-China policy and Beijing's efforts to combat what Chinese officials call the "three evil forces" of terrorism, separatism, and extremism (South China Morning Post [SCMP], October 18).
In an interview with the South China Morning Post, Zhu Yongbiao, a regional specialist at Lanzhou University, emphasized the breadth of the PRC's commercial offerings, ranging from electric vehicles and renewable energy to ordinary manufactures. He argued that Chinese firms could provide products and solutions suited to individual Central Asian markets, which is "an advantage the U.S. simply lacks" (SCMP, October 18).
* * *
Model of New Tashkent Displayed at the Center of Islamic Civilization in Tashkent
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Conclusion
Chinese commentary on Rubio's visit has so far combined recognition of Washington's growing ambitions in Central Asia with skepticism about its capacity to act on them. In the lead-up to the trip, Zhang Jiadong, a professor at Fudan University's Center for American Studies, argued that the U.S. was merely a "distant friend" to the region (Global Times, October 19).
Central Asian governments welcome Washington's engagement because it gives them greater leverage with the PRC. Unless U.S. investment follows, though, Washington will remain a "distant friend," lagging the PRC in influence and access.
* * *
Bradley Jardine manages the Oxus Society's research portfolio and is a Fellow at the Wilson Center's Kissinger Institute on China and the United States.
Edward Lemon is the DMGS-Kennan Institute Fellow, Daniel Morgan Graduate School in Washington DC. His research examines security, Islam, migration and politics in Tajikistan and Eurasia.
* * *
Original text here: https://jamestown.org/u-s-prc-competition-enters-new-phase-in-central-asia/
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
U.S.-PRC Competition Enters New Phase in Central Asia
Bradley Jardine | Edward Lemon
Executive Summary
* U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's recent visit to Uzbekistan marked Washington's most concrete push yet to compete with Beijing in Central Asia, especially on critical minerals and connectivity.
* Rubio emphasized that Washington would not force Tashkent to choose between the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC), unlike the ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 -- The Jamestown Foundation issued the following commentary on Oct. 30, 2026, in the foundation's China Brief Notes: * * * U.S.-PRC Competition Enters New Phase in Central Asia Bradley Jardine | Edward Lemon Executive Summary * U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's recent visit to Uzbekistan marked Washington's most concrete push yet to compete with Beijing in Central Asia, especially on critical minerals and connectivity. * Rubio emphasized that Washington would not force Tashkent to choose between the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC), unlike themore confrontational approach of the first Trump administration.
* U.S. outreach to Uzbekistan still trails PRC engagement. The PRC announced $60 billion in investment in Uzbekistan just before Rubio's visit, as compared to a possible $16 billion in deals signed during the U.S.-Uzbekistan meetings. The same lag appears in the U.S. priority sector of critical minerals. The United States imports around 2 percent of the region's critical minerals, while the PRC imports nearly 50 percent.
-
Far from the geopolitical flashpoints of the Persian Gulf and Ukraine, double-landlocked Uzbekistan has become a new arena for competition between the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC). On October 20, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in Samarkand, accompanied by an American business delegation totaling over 200 people (Daryo, October 14). On the city's historic central square, Rubio said in his speech that "we're here now" to advance U.S.-Uzbekistan connectivity, just as the historic Silk Road brought global trade through the region (U.S. Embassy in the PRC, October 20).
The PRC has spent decades investing in reinvigorating the very trade routes Rubio invoked. He recognized in a response to a local journalist that "it's a competition," but that American businesses should "have a fair shot to compete" (U.S. Embassy in the PRC, October 20). Anticipating Washington's overtures, Beijing dispatched Premier Li Qiang to Tashkent three days before Rubio's speech. For the PRC, Uzbekistan is a critical partner in its efforts to connect Eurasia. For the United States, the region's potentially vast critical mineral deposits offer an opportunity to diversify supply chains and reduce its frontier technology sector's dependence on Chinese components (RFE/RL, October 21).
Competition Overshadows Other Interests
Rubio's visit marked a change in regional strategy since President Donald Trump's first term. In 2020, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo drew attention to the PRC's mistreatment of Uyghurs and Kazakhs as a potential wedge between Central Asia and the PRC (Current Time, February 2, 2020). Fears of this binary approach recently resurfaced in the summer when the State Department sought to force Kazakhstan to choose between the United States's Pax Silica initiative and PRC's World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (RFE/RL, September 17).
The October visit presented a less confrontational approach. Rubio acknowledged that "Uzbekistan has been clear that they want to be friends with everybody," but said that the United States does not wish to force Uzbekistan to stop talking to somebody else or stop working with some other country (U.S. Embassy in the PRC, October 20). This suggests a U.S. recognition that Central Asian governments have become more capable geostrategic players in their own right. They can now effectively wield leverage to gain favorable relations with a wider range of actors than at any point since the collapse of the Soviet Union, including among themselves (Times of Central Asia, September 23).
Washington is seeking to challenge Beijing's dominance in Central Asia in critical minerals. After a regional minerals dialogue in 2024 and a White House summit in 2025, the United States signed a new investment framework with Uzbekistan in February 2026, targeting mineral exploration, extraction, and processing, along with plans for a joint investment company (Reuters, February 18).
Rubio's visit was the next test of whether Washington could turn those ambitions into tangible investment. Nearly 300 representatives of American businesses accompanied him and announced potential deals worth around $12 billion (Kun, October 25). Local media reports that almost 54 agreements were signed, including plans involving GE Aerospace, railway equipment manufacturer Wabtec, financial institutions such as Citigroup and BlackRock, and companies active in mineral development (Gazeta, October 19). Surprisingly, the joint statement issued after the visit failed to mention critical minerals specifically.
The statement emphasized supporting the development of Central Asian economies. It singled out the U.S. goal of helping Central Asia achieve its "export potential" by "developing innovative ways to increase value-added products within the region and [create] pathways to introduce these products to the international market" (Department of State, October 19). It also added that the United States seeks to "foster a region where e-commerce flourishes, innovative solutions abound, and talented entrepreneurs thrive" by leveraging "secure and trusted technology, American technological excellence, and the growing technology sectors of Central Asia."
PRC-Central Asia Relations Exceed U.S. Outreach
Even if realized, U.S. investments trail significantly behind the $60 billion that the PRC promised three days before the highly anticipated U.S. visit (President of Uzbekistan, October 17). This disparity also shows up in the critical minerals sector. The United States imports just 2.1 percent of the region's critical minerals, according to the Oxus Society's Central Asia Resource Tracker, while the PRC imports almost 50 percent (Oxus Society, accessed October 26).
The pattern extends to broader trends in PRC-Central Asian trade, which topped $100 billion for the first time in 2025, of which Uzbekistan accounted for $16 billion (Xinhua, January 18). In the broader region, the PRC is also the largest trade partner for isolated Iran and Afghanistan (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, October 23, 2023).
* * *
Model of the BYD Car Factory in Jizzakh Free Economic Zone displayed in the Tashkent Islamic Civilization Center
* * *
Tashkent sees the PRC as being essential to its modernization. Beijing is investing in renewable energy and advanced manufacturing, and is spearheading major infrastructure projects such as the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway (Xinhua, October 18). During a recent visit to Tashkent, the authors saw how prominently these investments feature in the country's vision for the future. Inside the lavish, marble-clad, $150 million Center for Islamic Civilization, exhibits showcase Chinese-backed projects across Uzbekistan, including a scale model of BYD's auto factory in the southern Jizzakh region. The exhibits illustrated how much the Uzbek government is promoting the PRC's investments as part of its broader development ambitions.
During his meeting with Li Qiang on October 17, President Mirziyoyev described Uzbekistan-PRC relations as enjoying a "golden age," a phrase he had previously used in conversations with General Secretary Xi Jinping. He also reaffirmed Tashkent's support for the PRC's One-China policy and Beijing's efforts to combat what Chinese officials call the "three evil forces" of terrorism, separatism, and extremism (South China Morning Post [SCMP], October 18).
In an interview with the South China Morning Post, Zhu Yongbiao, a regional specialist at Lanzhou University, emphasized the breadth of the PRC's commercial offerings, ranging from electric vehicles and renewable energy to ordinary manufactures. He argued that Chinese firms could provide products and solutions suited to individual Central Asian markets, which is "an advantage the U.S. simply lacks" (SCMP, October 18).
* * *
Model of New Tashkent Displayed at the Center of Islamic Civilization in Tashkent
* * *
Conclusion
Chinese commentary on Rubio's visit has so far combined recognition of Washington's growing ambitions in Central Asia with skepticism about its capacity to act on them. In the lead-up to the trip, Zhang Jiadong, a professor at Fudan University's Center for American Studies, argued that the U.S. was merely a "distant friend" to the region (Global Times, October 19).
Central Asian governments welcome Washington's engagement because it gives them greater leverage with the PRC. Unless U.S. investment follows, though, Washington will remain a "distant friend," lagging the PRC in influence and access.
* * *
Bradley Jardine manages the Oxus Society's research portfolio and is a Fellow at the Wilson Center's Kissinger Institute on China and the United States.
Edward Lemon is the DMGS-Kennan Institute Fellow, Daniel Morgan Graduate School in Washington DC. His research examines security, Islam, migration and politics in Tajikistan and Eurasia.
* * *
Original text here: https://jamestown.org/u-s-prc-competition-enters-new-phase-in-central-asia/
[Category: ThinkTank]
Ifo Institute: Sharp Increases in Energy Prices Still Causing Price Pressure in Germany
MUNICH, Germany, Oct. 31 -- ifo Institute issued the following news release:
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30 October 2026
Sharp Increases in Energy Prices Still Causing Price Pressure in Germany
More companies in Germany are planning to raise their prices. The ifo price expectations rose from 23.0* points in September to 25.9 points in October 2026. "Companies are responding to the sharp increase in prices for crude oil and natural gas, which reached their highest level in the second half of October since 2022," says Timo Wollmershauser, Head of Forecasts at ifo. "In the coming months, inflation will continue to ... Show Full Article MUNICH, Germany, Oct. 31 -- ifo Institute issued the following news release: * * * 30 October 2026 Sharp Increases in Energy Prices Still Causing Price Pressure in Germany More companies in Germany are planning to raise their prices. The ifo price expectations rose from 23.0* points in September to 25.9 points in October 2026. "Companies are responding to the sharp increase in prices for crude oil and natural gas, which reached their highest level in the second half of October since 2022," says Timo Wollmershauser, Head of Forecasts at ifo. "In the coming months, inflation will continue torise for both producer and consumer prices."
In October, price expectations rose in most of the economic sectors. The increase was particularly pronounced in manufacturing, where the indicator climbed to 27.2 points, up from 22.0 points* in September.
Price expectations also rose in retail trade (32.2 points, up from 31.5*) and among consumer-related service providers (17.7 points, up from 15.1*). In construction, the indicator remained virtually unchanged at 16.1 points (down from 16.2* points in September).
Price pressure eased somewhat solely among business-related service providers, where the indicator fell to 22.3 points, down from 23.4* points in September.
*Seasonally adjusted
* * *
More Information
Survey (https://www.ifo.de/en/facts/2026-10-30/sharp-increases-energy-prices-still-causing-price-pressure-germany)
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Original text here: https://www.ifo.de/en/press-release/2026-10-30/sharp-increases-energy-prices-still-causing-price-pressure-germany
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
30 October 2026
Sharp Increases in Energy Prices Still Causing Price Pressure in Germany
More companies in Germany are planning to raise their prices. The ifo price expectations rose from 23.0* points in September to 25.9 points in October 2026. "Companies are responding to the sharp increase in prices for crude oil and natural gas, which reached their highest level in the second half of October since 2022," says Timo Wollmershauser, Head of Forecasts at ifo. "In the coming months, inflation will continue to ... Show Full Article MUNICH, Germany, Oct. 31 -- ifo Institute issued the following news release: * * * 30 October 2026 Sharp Increases in Energy Prices Still Causing Price Pressure in Germany More companies in Germany are planning to raise their prices. The ifo price expectations rose from 23.0* points in September to 25.9 points in October 2026. "Companies are responding to the sharp increase in prices for crude oil and natural gas, which reached their highest level in the second half of October since 2022," says Timo Wollmershauser, Head of Forecasts at ifo. "In the coming months, inflation will continue torise for both producer and consumer prices."
In October, price expectations rose in most of the economic sectors. The increase was particularly pronounced in manufacturing, where the indicator climbed to 27.2 points, up from 22.0 points* in September.
Price expectations also rose in retail trade (32.2 points, up from 31.5*) and among consumer-related service providers (17.7 points, up from 15.1*). In construction, the indicator remained virtually unchanged at 16.1 points (down from 16.2* points in September).
Price pressure eased somewhat solely among business-related service providers, where the indicator fell to 22.3 points, down from 23.4* points in September.
*Seasonally adjusted
* * *
More Information
Survey (https://www.ifo.de/en/facts/2026-10-30/sharp-increases-energy-prices-still-causing-price-pressure-germany)
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Original text here: https://www.ifo.de/en/press-release/2026-10-30/sharp-increases-energy-prices-still-causing-price-pressure-germany
[Category: ThinkTank]
Hudson Institute Issues Commentary: Latin America Policy Is About to Get More Complicated
WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 -- Hudson Institute, a research organization that says it promotes leadership for a secure, free and prosperous future, issued the following commentary to The Dispatch:
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Oct 30, 2026
The Dispatch
Latin America Policy Is About to Get More Complicated
Gil Guerra
When future historians try to pinpoint the high-water mark of the second Trump administration's Latin America policy, they may very well settle on March 7, 2026, and the inaugural Shield of the Americas summit.
That Saturday, at his golf resort in Doral, Florida, President Donald Trump addressed a dozen leaders ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 -- Hudson Institute, a research organization that says it promotes leadership for a secure, free and prosperous future, issued the following commentary to The Dispatch: * * * Oct 30, 2026 The Dispatch Latin America Policy Is About to Get More Complicated Gil Guerra When future historians try to pinpoint the high-water mark of the second Trump administration's Latin America policy, they may very well settle on March 7, 2026, and the inaugural Shield of the Americas summit. That Saturday, at his golf resort in Doral, Florida, President Donald Trump addressed a dozen leadersfrom Latin America and the Caribbean. On hand were old friends like Javier Milei, the Argentine firebrand whose ardent support Trump could always count on, and El Salvador's Nayib Bukele, one of the administration's most enthusiastic partners on immigration enforcement.
Promising new allies were present too, like Bolivia's Rodrigo Paz and Chile's Jose Antonio Kast. Even once-prickly partners like Panama's Jose Raul Mulino had come more fully into the fold.
The heads of the assembled countries were open to partnering with Washington, and it wasn't hard to understand why. Trump was riding high on the spectacular success of Operation Absolute Resolve, the January raid that had captured Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro and wiped out 32 of his Cuban bodyguards without losing a single American life. True, Venezuela had not democratized overnight, and some allies were uneasy about the new role of interim president Delcy Rodriguez. But the raid had demonstrated that Washington was serious about prioritizing the region, a shift that held tantalizing prospects of greater investment and security assistance.
It could pay to be America's friend, and it could be exceptionally painful to be its enemy. Cuba had been starved of oil for almost three months and was resorting to putting state workers on a four-day workweek to save fuel. On the day of the summit, about two-thirds of the island was without power, and the regime's total collapse was treated almost as a foregone conclusion. In Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo's dictatorship had hurriedly scrapped its visa-free policy for Cubans shortly after the Maduro raid, in an apparent attempt to avoid drawing American ire. Nonstate actors were also feeling the weight of the new American commitment to the region: The U.S. had carried out 34 strikes on suspected drug boats to that point, and showed no signs of slowing down.
Relations with Mexico had been transformed too. Under the Biden administration, the border had served as a leverage point for Mexico. But now Claudia Sheinbaum's government was cooperating with the United States on border enforcement, and border encounter numbers had plunged to record lows. American pressure also had led Sheinbaum's government to halt oil shipments to Cuba, and it had extradited 92 cartel figures to American custody. Perhaps wary of the Trump administration's undisguised appetite for unilateral military operations on its soil, Mexico had also just worked with U.S. intelligence to carry out its most ambitious operation against a drug kingpin in years.
The United States seemed capable of squeezing friend and foe alike to get what it wanted, and no one could say with certainty what it might do next, or whether there were limits to what it could achieve. Almost eight months later, some of those limits are beginning to crystallize. The Iran war has become a counterexample to the decisive outcome of Operation Absolute Resolve, Trump's attention has been diverted by domestic political issues, and developments in the region have taken a few surprising turns.
Right-wing momentum stalls.
A string of right-wing political victories in the region has buoyed the Trump administration's strategy. From January 2025 to July 2026, conservative candidates won all seven presidential elections in Latin America. Trump ally Flavio Bolsonaro's lead in the first round of Brazil's election raised hopes that South America's largest country would soon throw its considerable weight behind the administration's regional efforts.
Instead, Bolsonaro lost in a surprise upset to leftist incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and found himself going from being the president-in-waiting to having to flee the country for the United States for fear of being arrested by Lula's government.
Bolsonaro's loss is not the only complication for the administration's hemispheric strategy. The region's right has seen a drop in popularity: Seven of the 11 right-of-center presidents in Latin America have negative approval ratings, and only Bukele and Costa Rica's Laura Fernandez command the support of comfortable majorities.
Some are also hedging by strengthening ties with China. Ecuador's Daniel Noboa made his first state visit to China in August, Chile has reaffirmed the one-China policy, Kast is meeting with Xi Jinping at the APEC summit in Shenzhen next month, and Peru's Keiko Fujimori has reportedly assured China that Peru attaches great importance to its ties with the nation.
Progress in Venezuela, site of the administration's crowning foreign policy achievement, has been rocky. A devastating set of earthquakes in June set back the country's recovery efforts. Impatient with the private sector's unwillingness to commit to revitalizing Venezuela's oil industry, the White House directly facilitated and joined an oil deal some of its usual supporters have been critical of.
The return of Maria Corina Machado, Venezuela's leading opposition figure, also introduces an element of turbulence into the stability the administration has thus far enjoyed in Venezuela. Calls for elections are growing in strength, and the political situation threatens to begin taking on a life of its own.
Far from collapsing or acquiescing, Cuba and Nicaragua have only grown more brazen in their hostility toward the United States. At the U.N. this week, a Cuban diplomat tried to interrupt Ambassador Mike Waltz's remarks on the embargo and made physical contact with an American diplomat. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel later swore that Cuba "will not back down ... in the face of Yankee pressures and orders."
The Nicaraguan regime has gone even further, shamelessly consolidating its grip on power through an announcement that the country would cease to hold elections, a declaration later converted to a formal constitutional reform process that would see Ortega and Murillo functionally installed as dictators for life.
Out of focus.
What happened? Rightly or wrongly, many actors in the region have determined that the American approach to the region is not going to be the one Washington seemed to be taking in March, for three broad reasons.
First, in his own rhetoric, Trump has repeatedly stated that the U.S. will deal with Cuba after it finishes with Iran. This may be honest and even prudent, but the lessons the Cubans (and the Nicaraguans, who are sometimes mentioned as being next on the administration's to-do list after Cuba) have taken from it are that they are safe as long as the U.S. remains mired in war with Iran. They have evidently decided that they can hold out until the midterm elections, when they expect Republican losses will weaken the president and potentially restrain his Western Hemisphere policy further.
Second, the administration's priorities have sometimes come across as inconsistent. The crux of current American regional strategy, as outlined at the Doral summit, is that the U.S. will not "allow hostile foreign influence to gain a foothold in this hemisphere." This was clearly aimed at China and Russia, but since then, Trump has made a state visit to China, hosted Xi Jinping at the White House, and generally taken a more conciliatory approach to U.S.-China relations than expected.
A military pact with Nicaragua that Russia ratified in April was not met with a dramatic response, and Trump has recently sought to bargain with Russia as well. These developments have made it more difficult for Latin American leaders to discern exactly where the administration's lines are when it comes to engaging with China and Russia.
Third, the United States has not always treated its friends in a friendly manner. Nine of the 12 governments in the Shield of the Americas coalition in March were hit by the forced-labor tariffs that Washington announced in July. These tariffs were particularly harsh for Chile, whose strategic importance and friendly president couldn't save it from being placed in the highest tariff tier of 12.5 percent. The message actions such as these have conveyed is that spending political capital to align with Washington doesn't necessarily buy protection or preferential treatment.
None of this means that Washington has walked away from the region, that it has neglected its partners, or that it has given up on Cuba and Nicaragua. The U.S. has announced plans for $1 billion in security assistance to Colombia, continues to signal forthcoming action in Cuba, and is increasing its scrutiny of the Ortega-Murillo regime.
But compared with how things stood in March, the regional order that Operation Absolute Resolve seemed to be ushering in now appears far less certain.
Running out the clock.
Next week's midterms could further complicate the administration's hemispheric strategy. If Democrats win the Senate and the House, they will likely use their subpoena power to investigate a number of the administration's actions in the region, from the drug-boat strikes to the terms of the Venezuelan oil deal to the State Department's role in the Brazilian election. They could also use spending bills to limit the tools at the White House's disposal. This could include barring funds for unauthorized military actions against Cuba or restricting the Pentagon office that holds Washington's stake in the Venezuelan oil deal.
However, it seems unlikely that Democrats will gain the supermajorities necessary to override a White House veto, and paradoxically a political environment that limits Trump's ability to pass his agenda in Congress could lead him to focus more on foreign policy, where the executive branch enjoys its broadest remit.
Regardless of the midterms' outcome, the administration will have its hands full in the region. Bolsonaro's flight to the U.S. will create another recurring issue in relations with Brazil, and consequential trade talks with Mexico are ongoing.
A military operation in Cuba could also be in the cards. Despite Trump's professed confidence that a deal with the island's communist leaders will come together, diplomacy appears to have stalled. While tensions with the Cuban government have been simmering for months, given Trump's particular loathing for being defied or insulted publicly, Cuban behavior at the U.N. this week could prove to be a tipping point.
While Cuba has rightly become a core issue in the administration's regional strategy, the U.S. might have an easier time reestablishing deterrence and credibility in the region by mounting a swift response to the growing problems in Nicaragua. The region is united in its view that Nicaragua has become a destabilizing presence, and the Nicaraguan regime has never faced the kind of pressure campaign the United States could bring to bear upon it. Taking decisive action against the Nicaraguan dictatorship would send a message to both the Cuban regime and remaining Chavista figures in Venezuela that Operation Absolute Resolve was not a one-off but rather the opening move toward establishing a safer, more prosperous democratic order.
The stability of that order will require the U.S. to demonstrate a willingness to make trade-offs that benefit its friends, such as conditional tariff relief for countries that continue to align with Washington. Perhaps most important, it will also require the U.S. to see the return of democracy to Venezuela through to the end. If the U.S. can prove that it is capable not only of destroying things that are evil but also of building things that are good, American power will seem like something to follow rather than to fear.
Read in The Dispatch (https://thedispatch.com/article/latin-america-trump-donroe-doctrine-venezuela-brazil/?gift_key=d7f35ea38a7c01a2&gift_ref=5022860&utm_source=giftlink&utm_campaign=membergift&utm_medium=copy_link).
* * *
Gil Guerra is a fellow at Hudson Institute. He specializes in United States strategy for the Western Hemisphere, with a focus on the political, economic, and security dynamics shaping Latin America and the Caribbean and their implications for US interests.
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Original text here: https://www.hudson.org/foreign-policy/latin-america-policy-about-get-more-complicated-venezuela-mexico-argentinagil-guerra
[Category: ThinkTank]
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Oct 30, 2026
The Dispatch
Latin America Policy Is About to Get More Complicated
Gil Guerra
When future historians try to pinpoint the high-water mark of the second Trump administration's Latin America policy, they may very well settle on March 7, 2026, and the inaugural Shield of the Americas summit.
That Saturday, at his golf resort in Doral, Florida, President Donald Trump addressed a dozen leaders ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 -- Hudson Institute, a research organization that says it promotes leadership for a secure, free and prosperous future, issued the following commentary to The Dispatch: * * * Oct 30, 2026 The Dispatch Latin America Policy Is About to Get More Complicated Gil Guerra When future historians try to pinpoint the high-water mark of the second Trump administration's Latin America policy, they may very well settle on March 7, 2026, and the inaugural Shield of the Americas summit. That Saturday, at his golf resort in Doral, Florida, President Donald Trump addressed a dozen leadersfrom Latin America and the Caribbean. On hand were old friends like Javier Milei, the Argentine firebrand whose ardent support Trump could always count on, and El Salvador's Nayib Bukele, one of the administration's most enthusiastic partners on immigration enforcement.
Promising new allies were present too, like Bolivia's Rodrigo Paz and Chile's Jose Antonio Kast. Even once-prickly partners like Panama's Jose Raul Mulino had come more fully into the fold.
The heads of the assembled countries were open to partnering with Washington, and it wasn't hard to understand why. Trump was riding high on the spectacular success of Operation Absolute Resolve, the January raid that had captured Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro and wiped out 32 of his Cuban bodyguards without losing a single American life. True, Venezuela had not democratized overnight, and some allies were uneasy about the new role of interim president Delcy Rodriguez. But the raid had demonstrated that Washington was serious about prioritizing the region, a shift that held tantalizing prospects of greater investment and security assistance.
It could pay to be America's friend, and it could be exceptionally painful to be its enemy. Cuba had been starved of oil for almost three months and was resorting to putting state workers on a four-day workweek to save fuel. On the day of the summit, about two-thirds of the island was without power, and the regime's total collapse was treated almost as a foregone conclusion. In Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo's dictatorship had hurriedly scrapped its visa-free policy for Cubans shortly after the Maduro raid, in an apparent attempt to avoid drawing American ire. Nonstate actors were also feeling the weight of the new American commitment to the region: The U.S. had carried out 34 strikes on suspected drug boats to that point, and showed no signs of slowing down.
Relations with Mexico had been transformed too. Under the Biden administration, the border had served as a leverage point for Mexico. But now Claudia Sheinbaum's government was cooperating with the United States on border enforcement, and border encounter numbers had plunged to record lows. American pressure also had led Sheinbaum's government to halt oil shipments to Cuba, and it had extradited 92 cartel figures to American custody. Perhaps wary of the Trump administration's undisguised appetite for unilateral military operations on its soil, Mexico had also just worked with U.S. intelligence to carry out its most ambitious operation against a drug kingpin in years.
The United States seemed capable of squeezing friend and foe alike to get what it wanted, and no one could say with certainty what it might do next, or whether there were limits to what it could achieve. Almost eight months later, some of those limits are beginning to crystallize. The Iran war has become a counterexample to the decisive outcome of Operation Absolute Resolve, Trump's attention has been diverted by domestic political issues, and developments in the region have taken a few surprising turns.
Right-wing momentum stalls.
A string of right-wing political victories in the region has buoyed the Trump administration's strategy. From January 2025 to July 2026, conservative candidates won all seven presidential elections in Latin America. Trump ally Flavio Bolsonaro's lead in the first round of Brazil's election raised hopes that South America's largest country would soon throw its considerable weight behind the administration's regional efforts.
Instead, Bolsonaro lost in a surprise upset to leftist incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and found himself going from being the president-in-waiting to having to flee the country for the United States for fear of being arrested by Lula's government.
Bolsonaro's loss is not the only complication for the administration's hemispheric strategy. The region's right has seen a drop in popularity: Seven of the 11 right-of-center presidents in Latin America have negative approval ratings, and only Bukele and Costa Rica's Laura Fernandez command the support of comfortable majorities.
Some are also hedging by strengthening ties with China. Ecuador's Daniel Noboa made his first state visit to China in August, Chile has reaffirmed the one-China policy, Kast is meeting with Xi Jinping at the APEC summit in Shenzhen next month, and Peru's Keiko Fujimori has reportedly assured China that Peru attaches great importance to its ties with the nation.
Progress in Venezuela, site of the administration's crowning foreign policy achievement, has been rocky. A devastating set of earthquakes in June set back the country's recovery efforts. Impatient with the private sector's unwillingness to commit to revitalizing Venezuela's oil industry, the White House directly facilitated and joined an oil deal some of its usual supporters have been critical of.
The return of Maria Corina Machado, Venezuela's leading opposition figure, also introduces an element of turbulence into the stability the administration has thus far enjoyed in Venezuela. Calls for elections are growing in strength, and the political situation threatens to begin taking on a life of its own.
Far from collapsing or acquiescing, Cuba and Nicaragua have only grown more brazen in their hostility toward the United States. At the U.N. this week, a Cuban diplomat tried to interrupt Ambassador Mike Waltz's remarks on the embargo and made physical contact with an American diplomat. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel later swore that Cuba "will not back down ... in the face of Yankee pressures and orders."
The Nicaraguan regime has gone even further, shamelessly consolidating its grip on power through an announcement that the country would cease to hold elections, a declaration later converted to a formal constitutional reform process that would see Ortega and Murillo functionally installed as dictators for life.
Out of focus.
What happened? Rightly or wrongly, many actors in the region have determined that the American approach to the region is not going to be the one Washington seemed to be taking in March, for three broad reasons.
First, in his own rhetoric, Trump has repeatedly stated that the U.S. will deal with Cuba after it finishes with Iran. This may be honest and even prudent, but the lessons the Cubans (and the Nicaraguans, who are sometimes mentioned as being next on the administration's to-do list after Cuba) have taken from it are that they are safe as long as the U.S. remains mired in war with Iran. They have evidently decided that they can hold out until the midterm elections, when they expect Republican losses will weaken the president and potentially restrain his Western Hemisphere policy further.
Second, the administration's priorities have sometimes come across as inconsistent. The crux of current American regional strategy, as outlined at the Doral summit, is that the U.S. will not "allow hostile foreign influence to gain a foothold in this hemisphere." This was clearly aimed at China and Russia, but since then, Trump has made a state visit to China, hosted Xi Jinping at the White House, and generally taken a more conciliatory approach to U.S.-China relations than expected.
A military pact with Nicaragua that Russia ratified in April was not met with a dramatic response, and Trump has recently sought to bargain with Russia as well. These developments have made it more difficult for Latin American leaders to discern exactly where the administration's lines are when it comes to engaging with China and Russia.
Third, the United States has not always treated its friends in a friendly manner. Nine of the 12 governments in the Shield of the Americas coalition in March were hit by the forced-labor tariffs that Washington announced in July. These tariffs were particularly harsh for Chile, whose strategic importance and friendly president couldn't save it from being placed in the highest tariff tier of 12.5 percent. The message actions such as these have conveyed is that spending political capital to align with Washington doesn't necessarily buy protection or preferential treatment.
None of this means that Washington has walked away from the region, that it has neglected its partners, or that it has given up on Cuba and Nicaragua. The U.S. has announced plans for $1 billion in security assistance to Colombia, continues to signal forthcoming action in Cuba, and is increasing its scrutiny of the Ortega-Murillo regime.
But compared with how things stood in March, the regional order that Operation Absolute Resolve seemed to be ushering in now appears far less certain.
Running out the clock.
Next week's midterms could further complicate the administration's hemispheric strategy. If Democrats win the Senate and the House, they will likely use their subpoena power to investigate a number of the administration's actions in the region, from the drug-boat strikes to the terms of the Venezuelan oil deal to the State Department's role in the Brazilian election. They could also use spending bills to limit the tools at the White House's disposal. This could include barring funds for unauthorized military actions against Cuba or restricting the Pentagon office that holds Washington's stake in the Venezuelan oil deal.
However, it seems unlikely that Democrats will gain the supermajorities necessary to override a White House veto, and paradoxically a political environment that limits Trump's ability to pass his agenda in Congress could lead him to focus more on foreign policy, where the executive branch enjoys its broadest remit.
Regardless of the midterms' outcome, the administration will have its hands full in the region. Bolsonaro's flight to the U.S. will create another recurring issue in relations with Brazil, and consequential trade talks with Mexico are ongoing.
A military operation in Cuba could also be in the cards. Despite Trump's professed confidence that a deal with the island's communist leaders will come together, diplomacy appears to have stalled. While tensions with the Cuban government have been simmering for months, given Trump's particular loathing for being defied or insulted publicly, Cuban behavior at the U.N. this week could prove to be a tipping point.
While Cuba has rightly become a core issue in the administration's regional strategy, the U.S. might have an easier time reestablishing deterrence and credibility in the region by mounting a swift response to the growing problems in Nicaragua. The region is united in its view that Nicaragua has become a destabilizing presence, and the Nicaraguan regime has never faced the kind of pressure campaign the United States could bring to bear upon it. Taking decisive action against the Nicaraguan dictatorship would send a message to both the Cuban regime and remaining Chavista figures in Venezuela that Operation Absolute Resolve was not a one-off but rather the opening move toward establishing a safer, more prosperous democratic order.
The stability of that order will require the U.S. to demonstrate a willingness to make trade-offs that benefit its friends, such as conditional tariff relief for countries that continue to align with Washington. Perhaps most important, it will also require the U.S. to see the return of democracy to Venezuela through to the end. If the U.S. can prove that it is capable not only of destroying things that are evil but also of building things that are good, American power will seem like something to follow rather than to fear.
Read in The Dispatch (https://thedispatch.com/article/latin-america-trump-donroe-doctrine-venezuela-brazil/?gift_key=d7f35ea38a7c01a2&gift_ref=5022860&utm_source=giftlink&utm_campaign=membergift&utm_medium=copy_link).
* * *
Gil Guerra is a fellow at Hudson Institute. He specializes in United States strategy for the Western Hemisphere, with a focus on the political, economic, and security dynamics shaping Latin America and the Caribbean and their implications for US interests.
* * *
Original text here: https://www.hudson.org/foreign-policy/latin-america-policy-about-get-more-complicated-venezuela-mexico-argentinagil-guerra
[Category: ThinkTank]
CSIS Issues Commentary: Transshipment Crackdowns Won't Fix the U.S.-China Trade Imbalance
WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary:
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Transshipment Crackdowns Won't Fix the U.S.-China Trade Imbalance
Commentary by Hugh Grant-Chapman
October 29, 2026
U.S.-China trade relations continue to enjoy a fragile detente, but recent dialogues between Washington and Beijing have not resolved underlying tensions. One point of friction is the White House's condemnation of Chinese "transshipment" of trade goods, articulated most clearly in its August 2026 report The Great Transshipment Scam. The report critiques a wide range ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary: * * * Transshipment Crackdowns Won't Fix the U.S.-China Trade Imbalance Commentary by Hugh Grant-Chapman October 29, 2026 U.S.-China trade relations continue to enjoy a fragile detente, but recent dialogues between Washington and Beijing have not resolved underlying tensions. One point of friction is the White House's condemnation of Chinese "transshipment" of trade goods, articulated most clearly in its August 2026 report The Great Transshipment Scam. The report critiques a wide rangeof trade practices that it argues constitute a coordinated strategy to illegally avoid U.S. tariffs imposed on Chinese goods. In doing so, it sets the stage for future actions toward China and other commercial partners.
The "transshipment scam" report reflects the Trump administration's continued dissatisfaction with the United States' and China's respective roles in the global trade landscape. Despite the flurry of U.S. actions against China since early 2025, Beijing's export-oriented economic growth model continues to perpetuate global trade imbalances, stoking political backlash in Washington, Brussels, and other capitals around the world. Moreover, the overarching U.S. trade balance has not durably shrunk, and concerns of threatened U.S. industrial competitiveness vis-a-vis China remain as strong as ever. U.S.-China relations are likely to remain strained as long as these factors persist.
The White House muddies the policy debates surrounding these issues, however, by blaming them all on transshipment. The most novel contribution made by the report is an attempt to stretch the definition of transshipment beyond its traditional definition--i.e., the rerouting of unmodified goods through intermediate countries--to include substantive overseas manufacturing using Chinese-origin inputs. The analysis below examines the extent to which transshipment is taking place, both in the traditional sense and under the White House's expanded definition, and unpacks potential policy options for addressing these respective phenomena.
Empirical Evidence on Rerouting Chinese-Origin Products
A core aspect of the White House report's argument is that Chinese-origin products are continuing to flow into the United States even though direct bilateral trade has shrunk. This allegedly takes place through more than 40 economies that reroute intermediate or final Chinese goods from China to the United States to benefit from lower tariff rates. CSIS's own analysis shows that some of these economies have indeed experienced disproportionate growth in imports from China and in exports to the United States since 2024, a signal that these countries may be serving as "connectors" of U.S. and Chinese economic activity (see Figure 1). These countries, which fall into the top-right quadrant of Figure 1 below, are thus sometimes referred to as connector economies.
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Figure 1: Connector Economies Show Growing Trade with Both China and the United States
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The first part of the White House's claim has strong empirical support. A 2026 Peterson Institute for International Economics policy brief examines the share of U.S. import value that originated in China, either through direct imports from China or from Chinese upstream inputs embedded in products imported from elsewhere--a measure known as "value added." It finds that Chinese value added flowing into the United States has grown since 2018 even as U.S. direct imports from China have fallen (see Figure 2), meaning that Chinese value added increasingly enters the United States via third countries. The Peterson paper and other analyses identify Mexico and Vietnam as two prominent conduits linking U.S. and Chinese supply chains, providing a pathway for 23 percent and 15 percent of indirect Chinese value added entering the United States in 2024, respectively.
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Figure 2: U.S. Direct Imports from China Have Slowed, But Chinese-Origin Products Continue to Enter the United States Indirectly
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The key question is how this value added reaches the United States. A factory in Mexico exporting specialized products using Chinese inputs may simply reflect an efficient supply chain responding to comparative advantages. This is a wholly different phenomenon than a logistics company importing products from China and directly re-exporting them without modification (i.e., the traditional definition of transshipment). Legal and policy implications are determined by how Chinese goods pass through connector economies, and specifically whether or not they have been substantially transformed along the way.
One way to assess the predominance of rerouting versus substantial transformation is investigating whether the six-digit Harmonized System (HS-6) code--the international standard taxonomy for classifying traded goods--changes for a certain good between its import from China and its export to the United States. If a country's imports from China and exports to the United States are both growing, and a growing share of its U.S.-bound exports match its Chinese imports, transshipment may be occurring. On the other hand, a flat or declining share of overlapping trade suggests transshipment is not growing as a share of that country's total trade activity.
Building on prior research, CSIS analysis shows that for many economies singled out in the White House report, the overlap in imports from China and exports to the United States has not meaningfully grown. Figure 3 shows the percentage-point difference in overlapping Chinese imports and U.S.-bound exports by identical HS-6 product code from 2024 to 2026, measured with the Finger-Kreinin Export Similarity Index. This analysis challenges the view that transshipment is the dominant way that Chinese-origin products end up in the United States. Some economies, such as Laos and Cambodia, do show a growing trade overlap, but several other economies show the opposite trend.
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Figure 3: Some But Not All Scrutinized Countries Show Growing Overlap in U.S. and Chinese Trade
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Mexico, Canada, and several Southeast Asian economies have particular scrutiny for their potential role in transshipment networks, and it is worth examining them more closely to assess these critiques. Of this group, U.S.-bound exports from Cambodia and Laos, and to a lesser extent from Singapore and Indonesia, increasingly overlap with the product categories these countries import from China (see Figure 4). Particular areas of overlapping growth in these countries include photovoltaic cells and steel products--both of which have been identified by Commerce Department duty circumvention investigations.
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Figure 4: Most Connector Economies Do Not Appear to Be Conducting Mass Rerouting--But Some Do
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More surprising, Malaysia, Mexico, Thailand, and Vietnam show no overall rise in their share of overlapping U.S. and Chinese trade; Malaysia and Thailand even show a decline. The divergence appears to be driven largely by specialization within electronics supply chains, in which these countries import simple electronics components from China and export advanced electronics to the United States (see Table 1). Some transshipment is still occurring in these economies--as illustrated by the investigations cited above--but it does not appear to be growing as a share of these countries' trade.
Overlapping HS-6 baskets provide clues to where transshipment might be occurring, but identifying illegal or problematic activity requires more granular analysis. Many HS-6 codes cover broad baskets of goods, and products can often be substantially transformed without changing HS-6 codes. Conversely, different HS-6 codes might be used for the same product in different contexts or by different countries. Also, analysis of government-reported trade statistics cannot account for instances of misreported value, classification, or origin--which recent research suggests have spiked since new tariffs were levied on China in early 2025. Products as diverse as tungsten carbide, quartz, plastic bags, and batteries have all been found by investigations to have been involved in illicit rerouting schemes.
These examples are plainly fraudulent, but transshipment itself is not inherently illegal or undesirable from a policy perspective. Companies route goods through third countries for several legitimate reasons, including port access, logistics synergies, and inventory storage. Problematic behavior, by contrast, involves concealing or misrepresenting a product's true origin to evade regulation or obtain a lower tariff rate. Even then, trade practices may be undesirable from a policy perspective without necessarily being prohibited under current trade law. By branding all such undesirable activity as illegal, the White House report conflates entirely legitimate business actions with criminal behavior.
The evidence above suggests that transshipment activity as conventionally defined explains only a subset of Chinese-origin value added flowing into the United States. The remainder is likely explained by routing through more substantial transformation steps in a multistage supply chain. International Monetary Fund research illustrates how such trade reallocation can be driven by Chinese businesses investing abroad, foreign firms relocating from China overseas, and local firms in connector economies turning Chinese inputs into products for the U.S. market. Other research reinforces this finding. A 2026 Federal Reserve study, for instance, found that Chinese production in Mexico accounted for about 14 points of Mexico's export gains after the 2018-19 tariffs, while direct transshipment accounted for less than 1 point.
Why Have Tariffs Failed to Reduce U.S. Imports of Chinese Value Added?
U.S. tariffs and trade actions from 2025 onward have shifted supply chain contours but have not reduced underlying U.S.-Chinese trade imbalances. Transshipment fraud explains part of this phenomenon but overlooks more fundamental macroeconomic determinants of the lopsided trade relationship.
China's economic model accounts for much of the macroeconomic situation. As China's domestic economic performance continues to underwhelm, its leaders have remained committed to an export-oriented growth strategy that props up supply-side economic activity. An undervalued real exchange rate, tepid consumer spending, and entrenched state support for key technology sectors all contribute to China's widening trade surplus. Given these factors, blocked exports to the United States are unsurprisingly being diverted to other markets rather than absorbed domestically or curtailed by contracted production. Data from 2025 shows that China's total exports rose 5.5 percent even as its exports to the United States fell about 20 percent, with many displaced exports shifting to the European Union.
Inverse factors contribute to the persistent U.S. trade deficit. U.S. domestic investment has risen on the back of a surge in AI infrastructure spending even as U.S. household savings remain low and the public-sector fiscal deficit widens. This mismatch pulls capital in from overseas to finance the investment, widening net capital inflows and conversely depressing the trade balance. AI spending in particular has pushed imports higher, both from China directly--which dominates global manufacturing of key inputs such as electrical transformers and optical transceivers--and from connector economies that rely on Chinese supply chains for high-tech goods.
These macroeconomic fundamentals force the United States into the position of net importer and China into the position of net exporter, fueling imbalances in their bilateral relations. Such factors have not changed since Washington hiked trade barriers against Beijing in 2025. What has changed is the emergence of sizable tariff differentials--in other words, differences between U.S. tariffs on Chinese products and those applied to other countries.
Historically, World Trade Organization most-favored-nation rates provided a broad ceiling to tariff rates that prevented the emergence of major tariff differentials. Now, many connector economies enjoy an average statutory tariff rate 10 to 20 percentage points lower than China's or more, as shown in Figure 5. This creates a powerful incentive for companies to relocate operations to lower-rate jurisdictions, even in instances when such shifts may not make much economic sense otherwise. Operating footprint changes in response to tariff differentials do not imply the existence of any central plan from the Chinese government to circumvent tariffs; such outcomes arise through decentralized profit-maximizing market logic, as several economists predicted shortly after earlier tariff announcements.
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Figure 5: Most Connector Economies Face Lower Tariffs than China
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Implications for U.S. Policy
Curtailing the supply chain shifts described above puts the White House in the unenviable position of steering commercial activity against market incentives. The White House report concludes that countervailing market forces necessitate stronger statist intervention and a more extensive apparatus for policing trade activity, which it conceives of as an "AI Detective Border." The exact mechanisms of this new system remain unclear, but it will necessitate more government spending on customs enforcement, higher compliance costs for companies, and stronger demands for monitoring and policing from Washington's trading partners.
Yet this emphasis on compliance elides the more fundamental policy question of what should qualify as legitimate manufacturing operations in connector countries. Much of the White House's critique falls on supply chain behavior that is permissible under current trade agreements--e.g., "component integration," which U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) hasoftenruled constitutes substantial transformation. Moreover, the standards the White House report uses to critique alleged transshipment activity, including share of Chinese value in inputs and the presence of Chinese ownership or financing, have not historically been used to determine origin under substantial transformation rules. Enforcement action alone will have a limited effect on shaping supply chain behavior unless these policy questions are resolved.
Because rules of origin chiefly govern tariff applicability under trade agreements, changing them will likely involve trade talks with U.S. commercial partners. This is no small feat. Rules of origin are complex legal standards that often are painstakingly negotiated product by product within a given trade agreement. The White House evidently anticipated such an undertaking when it included placeholder clauses in all 10 of the agreements on reciprocal trade finalized so far, which state that "if benefits of this Agreement are accruing substantially to third countries or third-country nationals, a Party may establish rules of origin necessary to achieve the Parties' intention for this Agreement" (or some variant of that language). As of early October 2026, there has been little motion on revisiting these clauses, but history suggests that the product of ongoing U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement negotiations may provide a template for updated rules of origin that can be applied to certain goods under other trade agreements.
New demands on connector economies may not be limited to updated rules of origin. One way Washington could advance its CBP upgrading efforts is to call for its trading partners to collect and share more customs data. CBP has already taken steps to require more data sharing from companies themselves, per an advance notice of proposed rulemaking to implement Executive Order 14411, and government-to-government sharing would be an obvious extension of this approach. Washington may also push its trading partners to increase enforcement of transshipment fraud laws. Such efforts are already underway in manyconnectoreconomies, but more state capacity could be warranted--particularly if new rules of origin require greater on-site scrutiny of manufacturing operations. Both measures would be costly to governments and industry actors in connector economies, and both may face political headwinds. Washington should be sensitive to these constraints when considering how to incentivize cooperation.
Though connector economies are the most likely target for U.S. pressure to stop transshipment activity, the White House may also engage Beijing directly. China's own economic imbalances incentivize transshipment by pressuring Chinese exporters with thin profit margins to eke out overseas sales wherever possible--even when such activity may require falsifying customs information. One concrete measure to curb transshipment incentives would be to reduce refunds for China's value-added tax (VAT) on exported goods. Earlier in 2026, China's State Taxation Administration moved to reduce the previous 9 percent VAT refund offered on exported goods, particularly batteries and solar panels. This action could be expanded to other goods that are aggravating U.S. transshipment concerns.
Agreeing with trade partners on substantive policy changes is challenging. Yet without these changes, efforts to achieve a more balanced economic relationship with China will fall short of their goals. The White House report misdiagnoses the challenges plaguing the U.S.-China trade relationship, and its recommended enforcement actions are misaligned to resolve unintended consequences of U.S. tariff differentials. A sustainable path forward involves more rigorous analysis of global trade patterns, reappraisal of the market-distorting effects of U.S. tariff differentials, and frank dialogue with trade partners and industry leaders about the utility and feasibility of new trade rules.
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Table 1: Top 5 Overlapping HS-6 Categories of Select Connector Economies' Imports from China and Exports to the United States
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Hugh Grant-Chapman is a fellow with the Economics Program and Scholl Chair in International Business at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
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Original text here: https://www.csis.org/analysis/transshipment-crackdowns-wont-fix-us-china-trade-imbalance
[Category: ThinkTank]
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Transshipment Crackdowns Won't Fix the U.S.-China Trade Imbalance
Commentary by Hugh Grant-Chapman
October 29, 2026
U.S.-China trade relations continue to enjoy a fragile detente, but recent dialogues between Washington and Beijing have not resolved underlying tensions. One point of friction is the White House's condemnation of Chinese "transshipment" of trade goods, articulated most clearly in its August 2026 report The Great Transshipment Scam. The report critiques a wide range ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary: * * * Transshipment Crackdowns Won't Fix the U.S.-China Trade Imbalance Commentary by Hugh Grant-Chapman October 29, 2026 U.S.-China trade relations continue to enjoy a fragile detente, but recent dialogues between Washington and Beijing have not resolved underlying tensions. One point of friction is the White House's condemnation of Chinese "transshipment" of trade goods, articulated most clearly in its August 2026 report The Great Transshipment Scam. The report critiques a wide rangeof trade practices that it argues constitute a coordinated strategy to illegally avoid U.S. tariffs imposed on Chinese goods. In doing so, it sets the stage for future actions toward China and other commercial partners.
The "transshipment scam" report reflects the Trump administration's continued dissatisfaction with the United States' and China's respective roles in the global trade landscape. Despite the flurry of U.S. actions against China since early 2025, Beijing's export-oriented economic growth model continues to perpetuate global trade imbalances, stoking political backlash in Washington, Brussels, and other capitals around the world. Moreover, the overarching U.S. trade balance has not durably shrunk, and concerns of threatened U.S. industrial competitiveness vis-a-vis China remain as strong as ever. U.S.-China relations are likely to remain strained as long as these factors persist.
The White House muddies the policy debates surrounding these issues, however, by blaming them all on transshipment. The most novel contribution made by the report is an attempt to stretch the definition of transshipment beyond its traditional definition--i.e., the rerouting of unmodified goods through intermediate countries--to include substantive overseas manufacturing using Chinese-origin inputs. The analysis below examines the extent to which transshipment is taking place, both in the traditional sense and under the White House's expanded definition, and unpacks potential policy options for addressing these respective phenomena.
Empirical Evidence on Rerouting Chinese-Origin Products
A core aspect of the White House report's argument is that Chinese-origin products are continuing to flow into the United States even though direct bilateral trade has shrunk. This allegedly takes place through more than 40 economies that reroute intermediate or final Chinese goods from China to the United States to benefit from lower tariff rates. CSIS's own analysis shows that some of these economies have indeed experienced disproportionate growth in imports from China and in exports to the United States since 2024, a signal that these countries may be serving as "connectors" of U.S. and Chinese economic activity (see Figure 1). These countries, which fall into the top-right quadrant of Figure 1 below, are thus sometimes referred to as connector economies.
* * *
Figure 1: Connector Economies Show Growing Trade with Both China and the United States
* * *
The first part of the White House's claim has strong empirical support. A 2026 Peterson Institute for International Economics policy brief examines the share of U.S. import value that originated in China, either through direct imports from China or from Chinese upstream inputs embedded in products imported from elsewhere--a measure known as "value added." It finds that Chinese value added flowing into the United States has grown since 2018 even as U.S. direct imports from China have fallen (see Figure 2), meaning that Chinese value added increasingly enters the United States via third countries. The Peterson paper and other analyses identify Mexico and Vietnam as two prominent conduits linking U.S. and Chinese supply chains, providing a pathway for 23 percent and 15 percent of indirect Chinese value added entering the United States in 2024, respectively.
* * *
Figure 2: U.S. Direct Imports from China Have Slowed, But Chinese-Origin Products Continue to Enter the United States Indirectly
* * *
The key question is how this value added reaches the United States. A factory in Mexico exporting specialized products using Chinese inputs may simply reflect an efficient supply chain responding to comparative advantages. This is a wholly different phenomenon than a logistics company importing products from China and directly re-exporting them without modification (i.e., the traditional definition of transshipment). Legal and policy implications are determined by how Chinese goods pass through connector economies, and specifically whether or not they have been substantially transformed along the way.
One way to assess the predominance of rerouting versus substantial transformation is investigating whether the six-digit Harmonized System (HS-6) code--the international standard taxonomy for classifying traded goods--changes for a certain good between its import from China and its export to the United States. If a country's imports from China and exports to the United States are both growing, and a growing share of its U.S.-bound exports match its Chinese imports, transshipment may be occurring. On the other hand, a flat or declining share of overlapping trade suggests transshipment is not growing as a share of that country's total trade activity.
Building on prior research, CSIS analysis shows that for many economies singled out in the White House report, the overlap in imports from China and exports to the United States has not meaningfully grown. Figure 3 shows the percentage-point difference in overlapping Chinese imports and U.S.-bound exports by identical HS-6 product code from 2024 to 2026, measured with the Finger-Kreinin Export Similarity Index. This analysis challenges the view that transshipment is the dominant way that Chinese-origin products end up in the United States. Some economies, such as Laos and Cambodia, do show a growing trade overlap, but several other economies show the opposite trend.
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Figure 3: Some But Not All Scrutinized Countries Show Growing Overlap in U.S. and Chinese Trade
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Mexico, Canada, and several Southeast Asian economies have particular scrutiny for their potential role in transshipment networks, and it is worth examining them more closely to assess these critiques. Of this group, U.S.-bound exports from Cambodia and Laos, and to a lesser extent from Singapore and Indonesia, increasingly overlap with the product categories these countries import from China (see Figure 4). Particular areas of overlapping growth in these countries include photovoltaic cells and steel products--both of which have been identified by Commerce Department duty circumvention investigations.
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Figure 4: Most Connector Economies Do Not Appear to Be Conducting Mass Rerouting--But Some Do
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More surprising, Malaysia, Mexico, Thailand, and Vietnam show no overall rise in their share of overlapping U.S. and Chinese trade; Malaysia and Thailand even show a decline. The divergence appears to be driven largely by specialization within electronics supply chains, in which these countries import simple electronics components from China and export advanced electronics to the United States (see Table 1). Some transshipment is still occurring in these economies--as illustrated by the investigations cited above--but it does not appear to be growing as a share of these countries' trade.
Overlapping HS-6 baskets provide clues to where transshipment might be occurring, but identifying illegal or problematic activity requires more granular analysis. Many HS-6 codes cover broad baskets of goods, and products can often be substantially transformed without changing HS-6 codes. Conversely, different HS-6 codes might be used for the same product in different contexts or by different countries. Also, analysis of government-reported trade statistics cannot account for instances of misreported value, classification, or origin--which recent research suggests have spiked since new tariffs were levied on China in early 2025. Products as diverse as tungsten carbide, quartz, plastic bags, and batteries have all been found by investigations to have been involved in illicit rerouting schemes.
These examples are plainly fraudulent, but transshipment itself is not inherently illegal or undesirable from a policy perspective. Companies route goods through third countries for several legitimate reasons, including port access, logistics synergies, and inventory storage. Problematic behavior, by contrast, involves concealing or misrepresenting a product's true origin to evade regulation or obtain a lower tariff rate. Even then, trade practices may be undesirable from a policy perspective without necessarily being prohibited under current trade law. By branding all such undesirable activity as illegal, the White House report conflates entirely legitimate business actions with criminal behavior.
The evidence above suggests that transshipment activity as conventionally defined explains only a subset of Chinese-origin value added flowing into the United States. The remainder is likely explained by routing through more substantial transformation steps in a multistage supply chain. International Monetary Fund research illustrates how such trade reallocation can be driven by Chinese businesses investing abroad, foreign firms relocating from China overseas, and local firms in connector economies turning Chinese inputs into products for the U.S. market. Other research reinforces this finding. A 2026 Federal Reserve study, for instance, found that Chinese production in Mexico accounted for about 14 points of Mexico's export gains after the 2018-19 tariffs, while direct transshipment accounted for less than 1 point.
Why Have Tariffs Failed to Reduce U.S. Imports of Chinese Value Added?
U.S. tariffs and trade actions from 2025 onward have shifted supply chain contours but have not reduced underlying U.S.-Chinese trade imbalances. Transshipment fraud explains part of this phenomenon but overlooks more fundamental macroeconomic determinants of the lopsided trade relationship.
China's economic model accounts for much of the macroeconomic situation. As China's domestic economic performance continues to underwhelm, its leaders have remained committed to an export-oriented growth strategy that props up supply-side economic activity. An undervalued real exchange rate, tepid consumer spending, and entrenched state support for key technology sectors all contribute to China's widening trade surplus. Given these factors, blocked exports to the United States are unsurprisingly being diverted to other markets rather than absorbed domestically or curtailed by contracted production. Data from 2025 shows that China's total exports rose 5.5 percent even as its exports to the United States fell about 20 percent, with many displaced exports shifting to the European Union.
Inverse factors contribute to the persistent U.S. trade deficit. U.S. domestic investment has risen on the back of a surge in AI infrastructure spending even as U.S. household savings remain low and the public-sector fiscal deficit widens. This mismatch pulls capital in from overseas to finance the investment, widening net capital inflows and conversely depressing the trade balance. AI spending in particular has pushed imports higher, both from China directly--which dominates global manufacturing of key inputs such as electrical transformers and optical transceivers--and from connector economies that rely on Chinese supply chains for high-tech goods.
These macroeconomic fundamentals force the United States into the position of net importer and China into the position of net exporter, fueling imbalances in their bilateral relations. Such factors have not changed since Washington hiked trade barriers against Beijing in 2025. What has changed is the emergence of sizable tariff differentials--in other words, differences between U.S. tariffs on Chinese products and those applied to other countries.
Historically, World Trade Organization most-favored-nation rates provided a broad ceiling to tariff rates that prevented the emergence of major tariff differentials. Now, many connector economies enjoy an average statutory tariff rate 10 to 20 percentage points lower than China's or more, as shown in Figure 5. This creates a powerful incentive for companies to relocate operations to lower-rate jurisdictions, even in instances when such shifts may not make much economic sense otherwise. Operating footprint changes in response to tariff differentials do not imply the existence of any central plan from the Chinese government to circumvent tariffs; such outcomes arise through decentralized profit-maximizing market logic, as several economists predicted shortly after earlier tariff announcements.
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Figure 5: Most Connector Economies Face Lower Tariffs than China
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Implications for U.S. Policy
Curtailing the supply chain shifts described above puts the White House in the unenviable position of steering commercial activity against market incentives. The White House report concludes that countervailing market forces necessitate stronger statist intervention and a more extensive apparatus for policing trade activity, which it conceives of as an "AI Detective Border." The exact mechanisms of this new system remain unclear, but it will necessitate more government spending on customs enforcement, higher compliance costs for companies, and stronger demands for monitoring and policing from Washington's trading partners.
Yet this emphasis on compliance elides the more fundamental policy question of what should qualify as legitimate manufacturing operations in connector countries. Much of the White House's critique falls on supply chain behavior that is permissible under current trade agreements--e.g., "component integration," which U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) hasoftenruled constitutes substantial transformation. Moreover, the standards the White House report uses to critique alleged transshipment activity, including share of Chinese value in inputs and the presence of Chinese ownership or financing, have not historically been used to determine origin under substantial transformation rules. Enforcement action alone will have a limited effect on shaping supply chain behavior unless these policy questions are resolved.
Because rules of origin chiefly govern tariff applicability under trade agreements, changing them will likely involve trade talks with U.S. commercial partners. This is no small feat. Rules of origin are complex legal standards that often are painstakingly negotiated product by product within a given trade agreement. The White House evidently anticipated such an undertaking when it included placeholder clauses in all 10 of the agreements on reciprocal trade finalized so far, which state that "if benefits of this Agreement are accruing substantially to third countries or third-country nationals, a Party may establish rules of origin necessary to achieve the Parties' intention for this Agreement" (or some variant of that language). As of early October 2026, there has been little motion on revisiting these clauses, but history suggests that the product of ongoing U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement negotiations may provide a template for updated rules of origin that can be applied to certain goods under other trade agreements.
New demands on connector economies may not be limited to updated rules of origin. One way Washington could advance its CBP upgrading efforts is to call for its trading partners to collect and share more customs data. CBP has already taken steps to require more data sharing from companies themselves, per an advance notice of proposed rulemaking to implement Executive Order 14411, and government-to-government sharing would be an obvious extension of this approach. Washington may also push its trading partners to increase enforcement of transshipment fraud laws. Such efforts are already underway in manyconnectoreconomies, but more state capacity could be warranted--particularly if new rules of origin require greater on-site scrutiny of manufacturing operations. Both measures would be costly to governments and industry actors in connector economies, and both may face political headwinds. Washington should be sensitive to these constraints when considering how to incentivize cooperation.
Though connector economies are the most likely target for U.S. pressure to stop transshipment activity, the White House may also engage Beijing directly. China's own economic imbalances incentivize transshipment by pressuring Chinese exporters with thin profit margins to eke out overseas sales wherever possible--even when such activity may require falsifying customs information. One concrete measure to curb transshipment incentives would be to reduce refunds for China's value-added tax (VAT) on exported goods. Earlier in 2026, China's State Taxation Administration moved to reduce the previous 9 percent VAT refund offered on exported goods, particularly batteries and solar panels. This action could be expanded to other goods that are aggravating U.S. transshipment concerns.
Agreeing with trade partners on substantive policy changes is challenging. Yet without these changes, efforts to achieve a more balanced economic relationship with China will fall short of their goals. The White House report misdiagnoses the challenges plaguing the U.S.-China trade relationship, and its recommended enforcement actions are misaligned to resolve unintended consequences of U.S. tariff differentials. A sustainable path forward involves more rigorous analysis of global trade patterns, reappraisal of the market-distorting effects of U.S. tariff differentials, and frank dialogue with trade partners and industry leaders about the utility and feasibility of new trade rules.
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Table 1: Top 5 Overlapping HS-6 Categories of Select Connector Economies' Imports from China and Exports to the United States
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Hugh Grant-Chapman is a fellow with the Economics Program and Scholl Chair in International Business at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
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Original text here: https://www.csis.org/analysis/transshipment-crackdowns-wont-fix-us-china-trade-imbalance
[Category: ThinkTank]
CSIS Issues Commentary: Strength in Unity - Climate Action for the Pacific Islands
WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary:
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Strength in Unity: Climate Action for the Pacific Islands
Commentary by John Auge and Kathryn Paik
October 29, 2026
Introduction
Early in October, over 4,000 delegates from more than 100 countries gathered in Nadi, Fiji, for this year's pre-Conference of the Parties (COP) meeting in advance of November's COP 31 in Antalya, Turkey. For many Pacific nations, this event marked a key opportunity to engage in climate diplomacy and hopefully shape the agenda of COP 31, even as the COP ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary: * * * Strength in Unity: Climate Action for the Pacific Islands Commentary by John Auge and Kathryn Paik October 29, 2026 Introduction Early in October, over 4,000 delegates from more than 100 countries gathered in Nadi, Fiji, for this year's pre-Conference of the Parties (COP) meeting in advance of November's COP 31 in Antalya, Turkey. For many Pacific nations, this event marked a key opportunity to engage in climate diplomacy and hopefully shape the agenda of COP 31, even as the COPconstruct has failed to deliver real progress in recent years to mitigate the threat climate change poses to these islands.
Countries with small populations and limited diplomatic resources often view international institutions and multilateral forums as critical platforms to amplify their collective voices and advance common interests on a global stage. This approach has at times produced meaningful change by shaping international negotiations and increasing access to international legal and financial mechanisms. At the same time, complex bureaucracies, slow-moving funding procedures, and uninterested larger countries can constrain the extent to which small nations are able to realize tangible outcomes. Real progress demands sustained support from an international system that has so far proven unreliable.
This analysis examines how Pacific Island Countries (PICs) have leveraged international institutions to promote core interests such as climate change and discusses some of the benefits and limitations of this approach. To fully meet the Pacific's climate challenge, this approach of working collectively on the international stage must be broadened to include global partner countries, foundations, and institutions, all of which have a stake in the future of the Pacific. Supporting Pacific priorities on the global stage benefits more than just climate-vulnerable nations. A sovereign, secure Pacific Islands region also serves partners such as the United States, which sees a stable Pacific as critical to its own national security.
The Climate Diplomacy Challenge
PICs have a long history of engaging collectively through regional organizations such as the Pacific Islands Forum and through broader international coalitions such as the Pacific Small Island Developing States (PSIDS) at the United Nations to advance their common interests. For example, in 2008, then-Naoero Permanent Representative to the United Nations Marlene Moses introduced a draft resolution titled "Climate change and its possible security implications" on behalf of the PSIDS at the General Assembly's 63rd session, which was adopted the following year.
The ability to leverage these multilateral institutions is especially critical to combat challenges such as climate change that disproportionally threaten smaller island states and yet require action by larger emitters such as the United States and China. As climate change has emerged as the Pacific region's top national security threat, PICs have increasingly used multilateral institutions to elevate their concerns and advocate for stronger international action, such as in 2013 when the Pacific drove the creation of the Warsaw International Mechanism, the primary policy body within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to address loss and damage from the adverse effects of climate change.
For some PICs, climate change is truly existential. Studies predict that low-lying countries such as Tuvalu could be largely submerged by the end of the century. For most PICs, sea level rise is already causing devastating effects on local agriculture and forcing population movement as well as raising questions of maritime territorial sovereignty as exclusive economic zones shrink. And this is on top of the increasing occurrence of natural disasters, such as tsunamis, cyclones, and floods, which disproportionately affect island nations and cause annual economic losses of 3 to 5 percent of GDP in countries that are often already economically vulnerable. In extreme cases, this percentage can skyrocket: The 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai eruption wiped out 18 percent of Tonga's GDP that year.
As the largest international body, the United Nations provides an essential platform for Pacific nations to push for resolutions, elevate regional issues on the global stage, and conduct active climate diplomacy. While most PICs have only limited diplomatic presence abroad, 12 of the 14 PICs have diplomatic missions in New York at UN headquarters (the other two, Niue and the Cook Islands, do not have seats in the United Nations). All 14 PICs are signatories to the UNFCCC, which hosts COP, the largest annual climate summit in the world. During previous COPs, Pacific nations have regularly advocated progress on issues such as climate finance, loss and damage, and adaptation, among others. This advocacy helped build international support for loss and damage finance, including through a proposal drafted by a Pacific negotiator that contributed to the Loss and Damage Fund.
To maximize their power on the global stage, PICs have often joined coalitions of like-minded countries well beyond the Pacific. Most Pacific nations are classified as Small Island Developing States (SIDS), a UN-recognized classification comprising 39 states and 18 territories facing unique development challenges due to their size, geographic location, limited economies, and vulnerability to climate change. There have been four international SIDS conferences to date: 1994 in Barbados, 2005 in Mauritius, 2014 in Samoa, and 2024 in Antigua and Barbuda. Another interregional organization, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), is a voluntary intergovernmental group of small island and low-lying atoll countries that works to address climate change impacts.
Stronger Together . . . Maybe
In theory, institutions such as the United Nations provide equal footing to countries regardless of size or geopolitical power--Palau, a country of roughly 17,000 people, and India, with almost 1.5 billion people, each get one vote at the General Assembly. These multilateral institutions not only provide a platform for raising critical issues on a global stage but are also an important avenue for Pacific nations to advance national development priorities. The United Nations, World Bank, and Asian Development Bank, among others, provide technical support and development finance to Pacific nations to tackle a range of issues, including resilient infrastructure, food security, and climate adaptation--all of which are essential to meet the Pacific's sustainable development goals.
Residing in one of the most vulnerable regions in the world to climate change, Pacific Islands have had a disproportionate influence in global climate discussions and have achieved some tangible wins. For example, AOSIS entered the 1992 Rio Earth Summit with 12 goals and achieved 10 of them, including a provision in the UN climate convention recognizing the vulnerabilities of small islands and low-lying coastal nations. And in May this year, the UN General Assembly adopted the Vanuatu-led resolution stating that combating climate change is a "legal duty," not just a political choice--although the United States was one of eight members to vote against the resolution. Yet having a platform to speak does not always translate into action, and Pacific climate objectives are often limited by bureaucratic realities and the attention span of larger nations.
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Figure 1: Official Development Finance from Multilateral Institutions to Pacific Island Countries, 2008-2024
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Working through multilateral institutions also presents logistical challenges for Pacific nations. Participation in international institutions requires allocating often limited diplomatic and technical resources across regional organizations, UN negotiations, international financial institutions, and other multilateral processes. The size of PIC diplomatic networks provides one indication of these constraints. These countries have only a handful of overseas diplomatic missions, and those that do exist often have small numbers of staff to cover all bilateral and multilateral efforts across economic, diplomatic, political, and defense sectors. For example, the Federated States of Micronesia only has five staff at its embassy in the United States and Fiji only has three staff at its high commission in New Zealand.
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Table 1: Number of Diplomatic Missions Abroad
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Another limitation is the often lengthy and complex process to secure funding from multilateral institutions. Despite massive levels of climate financing available in recent years--annual climate finance reached $1.9 trillion in 2023--securing climate financing remains challenging for PICs. On average, the climate financing process takes roughly three years from project development to final approval. As of December 2024, the Pacific has only accessed 0.22 percent of global climate funds. For PICs on the front lines of climate change, these lengthy timelines can delay action on urgent needs. Earlier this year, Fiji's Minister for Information, Environment, and Climate Change Lynda Tabuya noted that although the region receives between $200 and $600 million per year for climate action from both partner nations and international organizations, the Pacific currently has a climate financing shortfall of almost $1 billion annually.
Some institutions are implementing changes to rectify this shortfall. For example, the international Green Climate Fund will be opening a regional office in Suva, Fiji, in 2027 as part of ongoing efforts to accelerate the delivery of funds to the Pacific. Frustrations over accessing sufficient climate financing also prompted the Pacific Islands Forum to launch in 2023 the Pacific Resilience Facility (PRF), the first Pacific-led financing vehicle for addressing the bespoke development finance needs of the Pacific region. At only roughly $200 million raised thus far, however, the fund risks falling far short of its goal of $500 million by the end of 2026.
Broadening the Collective: How the International System Can Work for the Pacific
Despite some limited success in leveraging their collective weight to meet critical climate needs, Pacific nations are unlikely to fully meet the climate change threat without greater support from the broader global community. Given the Pacific's key strategic location and emergence as an arena of great power competition, external partner support is not purely philanthropic. As the effects of climate change erode economies and infrastructure, they also negatively affect regional security and stability and weaken national and regional governance.
Countries such as the United States, Australia, and Japan--as well as partners farther abroad such as the European Union and Canada--are eager to see the Pacific remain independent, secure, and free from Chinese influence. The United States depends upon the Pacific as its connection to allies Australia, Japan, and the Philippines, to which the United States must have unhindered access in the case of a conflict with China. Even for an administration that has de-emphasized climate action, there is national interest in ensuring that PICs remain secure and maintain sovereignty over their vast maritime territories.
The following are some ways that outside powers--including countries, climate foundations, and multilateral institutions--can more effectively support Pacific climate objectives.
* Strengthen public-private partnerships and outreach to foundations. As Western nations such as the United States and Canada roll back their national climate policies, developing countries are increasingly setting the pace of climate action and working to make up the difference. The net result, however, remains insufficient to meet global targets and prevent future climate impacts around the world, especially in the most vulnerable island nations. Partner countries, companies, and foundations can work to enhance connectivity with Pacific nations and streamline climate funding opportunities in several ways:
- International climate foundations should establish or build out regional offices in the Pacific region and incorporate representatives from the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme and other regional hubs of expertise to advise on the region's unique challenges and needs.
- If institutions have only one or two regional hubs, they should still avoid executing only regional Pacific programming. Individual countries and subregions have distinct challenges, capacities, and needs; the most effective programming is often subregional or bilateral rather than region-wide.
- Even as nations roll back their own climate policies, existing programming should incorporate technical assistance to Pacific governments to enable outreach and coordination with global climate foundations and assist with grant writing and submissions, which are complex even for well-staffed bureaucracies.
- Companies should consider creative ways to launch or directly support initiatives that have economic and environmental benefit for both Pacific nations and the parent company. This could include digital infrastructure programs such as the Pacific Connect Initiative, or support to sustainable fishing such as the Pacific Island Tuna joint venture with The Nature Conservancy.
* Increase the frequency of the SIDS International Conference. Since its inception, the conference has been convened roughly once every 10 years, limiting opportunities for member states to maintain sustained dialogue. And yet, amid increasing effects of climate change, collective action and coordination between SIDS is more critical than ever. Outside donors should provide logistical and financial support to the SIDS grouping to allow more regular opportunities--perhaps on a biennial basis--for member countries to discuss shared challenges, coordinate their positions, and identify practical ways to advance common priorities.
* Provide direct support to the PRF. The world does not lack development financing institutions, but too often actual financial support is difficult to access and too slow to meet urgent needs. Housed and run by the Pacific, the PRF provides an agile and fit-for-purpose funding model to meet bespoke Pacific Island needs. COP 31 provides a prime opportunity for other nations to commit to meeting the PRF's target of $500 million by the end of this year and work toward the eventual goal of $1.5 billion.
* Broaden the discussion around loss and damage. Climate change wreaks havoc on island nations not just through natural disasters but through factors such as sea level rise that negatively affect agriculture and health and force population movement. Countries such as the United States that will not attend COP 31 and are not likely to fund the PRF should instead consider projects that reinforce critical health and digital infrastructure. Additionally, the United States and other nations should work to develop partnerships between agriculture and fishing agencies to solve industry-specific challenges.
Conclusion
As host of pre-COP, Fiji promoted three main themes: (1) keeping the 1.5-degree target within reach, (2) making climate finance more accessible, and (3) elevating ocean health in the climate regime. Yet despite these aspirations and broad consensus among Pacific nations and other SIDS as to the urgency of this threat, it is unclear what, if any, Pacific priorities will make it through to the final COP 31 outcome.
The ability of Pacific nations to form broad coalitions and move global policy with a heft far above their relative size is admirable and has achieved critical wins in the international battle against the effects of climate change. To truly halt the tide of increasing climate destruction on these island nations, however, this collective must expand further. To protect Pacific sovereignty and ensure that these island nations--protectors of much of the world's vast ocean resources--are secure well into the future requires sustained and sincere commitment from larger powers and international foundations alike. For the United States, that commitment is not charity but strategy: A stable, sovereign Pacific is vital to U.S. interests now and into the future.
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John Auge is program manager for the Australia Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Kathryn Paik is deputy director and senior fellow in the Australia Chair at CSIS.
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Original text here: https://www.csis.org/analysis/strength-unity-climate-action-pacific-islands
[Category: ThinkTank]
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Strength in Unity: Climate Action for the Pacific Islands
Commentary by John Auge and Kathryn Paik
October 29, 2026
Introduction
Early in October, over 4,000 delegates from more than 100 countries gathered in Nadi, Fiji, for this year's pre-Conference of the Parties (COP) meeting in advance of November's COP 31 in Antalya, Turkey. For many Pacific nations, this event marked a key opportunity to engage in climate diplomacy and hopefully shape the agenda of COP 31, even as the COP ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 -- The Center for Strategic and International Studies issued the following commentary: * * * Strength in Unity: Climate Action for the Pacific Islands Commentary by John Auge and Kathryn Paik October 29, 2026 Introduction Early in October, over 4,000 delegates from more than 100 countries gathered in Nadi, Fiji, for this year's pre-Conference of the Parties (COP) meeting in advance of November's COP 31 in Antalya, Turkey. For many Pacific nations, this event marked a key opportunity to engage in climate diplomacy and hopefully shape the agenda of COP 31, even as the COPconstruct has failed to deliver real progress in recent years to mitigate the threat climate change poses to these islands.
Countries with small populations and limited diplomatic resources often view international institutions and multilateral forums as critical platforms to amplify their collective voices and advance common interests on a global stage. This approach has at times produced meaningful change by shaping international negotiations and increasing access to international legal and financial mechanisms. At the same time, complex bureaucracies, slow-moving funding procedures, and uninterested larger countries can constrain the extent to which small nations are able to realize tangible outcomes. Real progress demands sustained support from an international system that has so far proven unreliable.
This analysis examines how Pacific Island Countries (PICs) have leveraged international institutions to promote core interests such as climate change and discusses some of the benefits and limitations of this approach. To fully meet the Pacific's climate challenge, this approach of working collectively on the international stage must be broadened to include global partner countries, foundations, and institutions, all of which have a stake in the future of the Pacific. Supporting Pacific priorities on the global stage benefits more than just climate-vulnerable nations. A sovereign, secure Pacific Islands region also serves partners such as the United States, which sees a stable Pacific as critical to its own national security.
The Climate Diplomacy Challenge
PICs have a long history of engaging collectively through regional organizations such as the Pacific Islands Forum and through broader international coalitions such as the Pacific Small Island Developing States (PSIDS) at the United Nations to advance their common interests. For example, in 2008, then-Naoero Permanent Representative to the United Nations Marlene Moses introduced a draft resolution titled "Climate change and its possible security implications" on behalf of the PSIDS at the General Assembly's 63rd session, which was adopted the following year.
The ability to leverage these multilateral institutions is especially critical to combat challenges such as climate change that disproportionally threaten smaller island states and yet require action by larger emitters such as the United States and China. As climate change has emerged as the Pacific region's top national security threat, PICs have increasingly used multilateral institutions to elevate their concerns and advocate for stronger international action, such as in 2013 when the Pacific drove the creation of the Warsaw International Mechanism, the primary policy body within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to address loss and damage from the adverse effects of climate change.
For some PICs, climate change is truly existential. Studies predict that low-lying countries such as Tuvalu could be largely submerged by the end of the century. For most PICs, sea level rise is already causing devastating effects on local agriculture and forcing population movement as well as raising questions of maritime territorial sovereignty as exclusive economic zones shrink. And this is on top of the increasing occurrence of natural disasters, such as tsunamis, cyclones, and floods, which disproportionately affect island nations and cause annual economic losses of 3 to 5 percent of GDP in countries that are often already economically vulnerable. In extreme cases, this percentage can skyrocket: The 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai eruption wiped out 18 percent of Tonga's GDP that year.
As the largest international body, the United Nations provides an essential platform for Pacific nations to push for resolutions, elevate regional issues on the global stage, and conduct active climate diplomacy. While most PICs have only limited diplomatic presence abroad, 12 of the 14 PICs have diplomatic missions in New York at UN headquarters (the other two, Niue and the Cook Islands, do not have seats in the United Nations). All 14 PICs are signatories to the UNFCCC, which hosts COP, the largest annual climate summit in the world. During previous COPs, Pacific nations have regularly advocated progress on issues such as climate finance, loss and damage, and adaptation, among others. This advocacy helped build international support for loss and damage finance, including through a proposal drafted by a Pacific negotiator that contributed to the Loss and Damage Fund.
To maximize their power on the global stage, PICs have often joined coalitions of like-minded countries well beyond the Pacific. Most Pacific nations are classified as Small Island Developing States (SIDS), a UN-recognized classification comprising 39 states and 18 territories facing unique development challenges due to their size, geographic location, limited economies, and vulnerability to climate change. There have been four international SIDS conferences to date: 1994 in Barbados, 2005 in Mauritius, 2014 in Samoa, and 2024 in Antigua and Barbuda. Another interregional organization, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), is a voluntary intergovernmental group of small island and low-lying atoll countries that works to address climate change impacts.
Stronger Together . . . Maybe
In theory, institutions such as the United Nations provide equal footing to countries regardless of size or geopolitical power--Palau, a country of roughly 17,000 people, and India, with almost 1.5 billion people, each get one vote at the General Assembly. These multilateral institutions not only provide a platform for raising critical issues on a global stage but are also an important avenue for Pacific nations to advance national development priorities. The United Nations, World Bank, and Asian Development Bank, among others, provide technical support and development finance to Pacific nations to tackle a range of issues, including resilient infrastructure, food security, and climate adaptation--all of which are essential to meet the Pacific's sustainable development goals.
Residing in one of the most vulnerable regions in the world to climate change, Pacific Islands have had a disproportionate influence in global climate discussions and have achieved some tangible wins. For example, AOSIS entered the 1992 Rio Earth Summit with 12 goals and achieved 10 of them, including a provision in the UN climate convention recognizing the vulnerabilities of small islands and low-lying coastal nations. And in May this year, the UN General Assembly adopted the Vanuatu-led resolution stating that combating climate change is a "legal duty," not just a political choice--although the United States was one of eight members to vote against the resolution. Yet having a platform to speak does not always translate into action, and Pacific climate objectives are often limited by bureaucratic realities and the attention span of larger nations.
* * *
Figure 1: Official Development Finance from Multilateral Institutions to Pacific Island Countries, 2008-2024
* * *
Working through multilateral institutions also presents logistical challenges for Pacific nations. Participation in international institutions requires allocating often limited diplomatic and technical resources across regional organizations, UN negotiations, international financial institutions, and other multilateral processes. The size of PIC diplomatic networks provides one indication of these constraints. These countries have only a handful of overseas diplomatic missions, and those that do exist often have small numbers of staff to cover all bilateral and multilateral efforts across economic, diplomatic, political, and defense sectors. For example, the Federated States of Micronesia only has five staff at its embassy in the United States and Fiji only has three staff at its high commission in New Zealand.
* * *
Table 1: Number of Diplomatic Missions Abroad
* * *
Another limitation is the often lengthy and complex process to secure funding from multilateral institutions. Despite massive levels of climate financing available in recent years--annual climate finance reached $1.9 trillion in 2023--securing climate financing remains challenging for PICs. On average, the climate financing process takes roughly three years from project development to final approval. As of December 2024, the Pacific has only accessed 0.22 percent of global climate funds. For PICs on the front lines of climate change, these lengthy timelines can delay action on urgent needs. Earlier this year, Fiji's Minister for Information, Environment, and Climate Change Lynda Tabuya noted that although the region receives between $200 and $600 million per year for climate action from both partner nations and international organizations, the Pacific currently has a climate financing shortfall of almost $1 billion annually.
Some institutions are implementing changes to rectify this shortfall. For example, the international Green Climate Fund will be opening a regional office in Suva, Fiji, in 2027 as part of ongoing efforts to accelerate the delivery of funds to the Pacific. Frustrations over accessing sufficient climate financing also prompted the Pacific Islands Forum to launch in 2023 the Pacific Resilience Facility (PRF), the first Pacific-led financing vehicle for addressing the bespoke development finance needs of the Pacific region. At only roughly $200 million raised thus far, however, the fund risks falling far short of its goal of $500 million by the end of 2026.
Broadening the Collective: How the International System Can Work for the Pacific
Despite some limited success in leveraging their collective weight to meet critical climate needs, Pacific nations are unlikely to fully meet the climate change threat without greater support from the broader global community. Given the Pacific's key strategic location and emergence as an arena of great power competition, external partner support is not purely philanthropic. As the effects of climate change erode economies and infrastructure, they also negatively affect regional security and stability and weaken national and regional governance.
Countries such as the United States, Australia, and Japan--as well as partners farther abroad such as the European Union and Canada--are eager to see the Pacific remain independent, secure, and free from Chinese influence. The United States depends upon the Pacific as its connection to allies Australia, Japan, and the Philippines, to which the United States must have unhindered access in the case of a conflict with China. Even for an administration that has de-emphasized climate action, there is national interest in ensuring that PICs remain secure and maintain sovereignty over their vast maritime territories.
The following are some ways that outside powers--including countries, climate foundations, and multilateral institutions--can more effectively support Pacific climate objectives.
* Strengthen public-private partnerships and outreach to foundations. As Western nations such as the United States and Canada roll back their national climate policies, developing countries are increasingly setting the pace of climate action and working to make up the difference. The net result, however, remains insufficient to meet global targets and prevent future climate impacts around the world, especially in the most vulnerable island nations. Partner countries, companies, and foundations can work to enhance connectivity with Pacific nations and streamline climate funding opportunities in several ways:
- International climate foundations should establish or build out regional offices in the Pacific region and incorporate representatives from the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme and other regional hubs of expertise to advise on the region's unique challenges and needs.
- If institutions have only one or two regional hubs, they should still avoid executing only regional Pacific programming. Individual countries and subregions have distinct challenges, capacities, and needs; the most effective programming is often subregional or bilateral rather than region-wide.
- Even as nations roll back their own climate policies, existing programming should incorporate technical assistance to Pacific governments to enable outreach and coordination with global climate foundations and assist with grant writing and submissions, which are complex even for well-staffed bureaucracies.
- Companies should consider creative ways to launch or directly support initiatives that have economic and environmental benefit for both Pacific nations and the parent company. This could include digital infrastructure programs such as the Pacific Connect Initiative, or support to sustainable fishing such as the Pacific Island Tuna joint venture with The Nature Conservancy.
* Increase the frequency of the SIDS International Conference. Since its inception, the conference has been convened roughly once every 10 years, limiting opportunities for member states to maintain sustained dialogue. And yet, amid increasing effects of climate change, collective action and coordination between SIDS is more critical than ever. Outside donors should provide logistical and financial support to the SIDS grouping to allow more regular opportunities--perhaps on a biennial basis--for member countries to discuss shared challenges, coordinate their positions, and identify practical ways to advance common priorities.
* Provide direct support to the PRF. The world does not lack development financing institutions, but too often actual financial support is difficult to access and too slow to meet urgent needs. Housed and run by the Pacific, the PRF provides an agile and fit-for-purpose funding model to meet bespoke Pacific Island needs. COP 31 provides a prime opportunity for other nations to commit to meeting the PRF's target of $500 million by the end of this year and work toward the eventual goal of $1.5 billion.
* Broaden the discussion around loss and damage. Climate change wreaks havoc on island nations not just through natural disasters but through factors such as sea level rise that negatively affect agriculture and health and force population movement. Countries such as the United States that will not attend COP 31 and are not likely to fund the PRF should instead consider projects that reinforce critical health and digital infrastructure. Additionally, the United States and other nations should work to develop partnerships between agriculture and fishing agencies to solve industry-specific challenges.
Conclusion
As host of pre-COP, Fiji promoted three main themes: (1) keeping the 1.5-degree target within reach, (2) making climate finance more accessible, and (3) elevating ocean health in the climate regime. Yet despite these aspirations and broad consensus among Pacific nations and other SIDS as to the urgency of this threat, it is unclear what, if any, Pacific priorities will make it through to the final COP 31 outcome.
The ability of Pacific nations to form broad coalitions and move global policy with a heft far above their relative size is admirable and has achieved critical wins in the international battle against the effects of climate change. To truly halt the tide of increasing climate destruction on these island nations, however, this collective must expand further. To protect Pacific sovereignty and ensure that these island nations--protectors of much of the world's vast ocean resources--are secure well into the future requires sustained and sincere commitment from larger powers and international foundations alike. For the United States, that commitment is not charity but strategy: A stable, sovereign Pacific is vital to U.S. interests now and into the future.
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John Auge is program manager for the Australia Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Kathryn Paik is deputy director and senior fellow in the Australia Chair at CSIS.
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Original text here: https://www.csis.org/analysis/strength-unity-climate-action-pacific-islands
[Category: ThinkTank]
America First Policy Institute Issues Commentary to Newsweek: Europe is Burning. America Cannot Let the Same Happen Here
WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 -- The America First Policy Institute issued the following excerpts of a commentary:
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Europe is Burning. America Cannot Let the Same Happen Here
October 30, 2026
On October 17, more than half a million French citizens marched peacefully over the cost of living and failing schools. By nightfall, the town hall in Limoges, which had survived two world wars, was a smoldering shell. Nearly 2,400 people were arrested. Roughly 1,000 police officers and firefighters were injured and at least 3,000 businesses were looted or damaged. Countless cars burned. What began as a public ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 -- The America First Policy Institute issued the following excerpts of a commentary: * * * Europe is Burning. America Cannot Let the Same Happen Here October 30, 2026 On October 17, more than half a million French citizens marched peacefully over the cost of living and failing schools. By nightfall, the town hall in Limoges, which had survived two world wars, was a smoldering shell. Nearly 2,400 people were arrested. Roughly 1,000 police officers and firefighters were injured and at least 3,000 businesses were looted or damaged. Countless cars burned. What began as a publicprotest has become a crisis of public order--and a warning to the entire West.
France, and Europe for that matter, has seen protests before. But as these protests spread beyond the French borders, a troubling question emerges: What happens when organized radical movements exploit legitimate grievances to weaken the institutions that make a free society possible? It is the erosion of a civilization's confidence in its ability to defend itself.
To read the full article, click here (https://www.newsweek.com/europe-is-burning-american-cannot-let-the-same-happen-here-opinion-12625717).
Originally published by Newsweek (https://www.newsweek.com/europe-is-burning-american-cannot-let-the-same-happen-here-opinion-12625717)
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The Honorable Chad Wolf
Chair, Homeland Security & Immigration Policy and Chair, Western Hemisphere Initiative
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Original text here: https://americafirstpolicy.com/issues/europe-is-burning-american-cannot-let-the-same-happen-here/
[Category: ThinkTank]
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Europe is Burning. America Cannot Let the Same Happen Here
October 30, 2026
On October 17, more than half a million French citizens marched peacefully over the cost of living and failing schools. By nightfall, the town hall in Limoges, which had survived two world wars, was a smoldering shell. Nearly 2,400 people were arrested. Roughly 1,000 police officers and firefighters were injured and at least 3,000 businesses were looted or damaged. Countless cars burned. What began as a public ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 -- The America First Policy Institute issued the following excerpts of a commentary: * * * Europe is Burning. America Cannot Let the Same Happen Here October 30, 2026 On October 17, more than half a million French citizens marched peacefully over the cost of living and failing schools. By nightfall, the town hall in Limoges, which had survived two world wars, was a smoldering shell. Nearly 2,400 people were arrested. Roughly 1,000 police officers and firefighters were injured and at least 3,000 businesses were looted or damaged. Countless cars burned. What began as a publicprotest has become a crisis of public order--and a warning to the entire West.
France, and Europe for that matter, has seen protests before. But as these protests spread beyond the French borders, a troubling question emerges: What happens when organized radical movements exploit legitimate grievances to weaken the institutions that make a free society possible? It is the erosion of a civilization's confidence in its ability to defend itself.
To read the full article, click here (https://www.newsweek.com/europe-is-burning-american-cannot-let-the-same-happen-here-opinion-12625717).
Originally published by Newsweek (https://www.newsweek.com/europe-is-burning-american-cannot-let-the-same-happen-here-opinion-12625717)
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The Honorable Chad Wolf
Chair, Homeland Security & Immigration Policy and Chair, Western Hemisphere Initiative
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Original text here: https://americafirstpolicy.com/issues/europe-is-burning-american-cannot-let-the-same-happen-here/
[Category: ThinkTank]
AFPI Files Amicus Brief Backing DOJ Efforts to Protect Election Integrity in California
WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 -- The America First Policy Institute issued the following news release:
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AFPI Files Amicus Brief Backing DOJ Efforts to Protect Election Integrity in California
October 30, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The America First Policy Institute (AFPI) has filed an amicus brief in United States v. California, supporting the Department of Justice's (DOJ) efforts to protect election integrity after it identified more than 20,000 likely noncitizen voters in California.
AFPI's brief urges the court to require California officials to set aside ballots associated with these individuals ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 -- The America First Policy Institute issued the following news release: * * * AFPI Files Amicus Brief Backing DOJ Efforts to Protect Election Integrity in California October 30, 2026 WASHINGTON, D.C. - The America First Policy Institute (AFPI) has filed an amicus brief in United States v. California, supporting the Department of Justice's (DOJ) efforts to protect election integrity after it identified more than 20,000 likely noncitizen voters in California. AFPI's brief urges the court to require California officials to set aside ballots associated with these individualsuntil their citizenship can be verified, ensuring that only eligible Americans' votes are counted.
Every American deserves the confidence of knowing that their vote has been lawfully counted and is not diluted by fraudulently cast votes. The discovery of more than 20,000 potentially illegal votes erodes public trust and violates election integrity.
"Every vote matters. The Department of Justice is taking the necessary steps to protect the integrity of our elections, and AFPI is proud to stand alongside them with this amicus brief," said Chad Mizelle, AFPI Chair of Litigation. "Ensuring that only eligible citizens cast ballots is not a partisan issue. It is a fundamental obligation to the American people. No state should put politics ahead of election integrity."
AFPI's brief outlines the common-sense safeguards that will ensure that citizenship is verified, and that no lawfully cast ballots are lost. American elections cannot be free and fair without the required verifications made before ballots are counted. Read the full brief here (https://americafirstpolicy.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/2026.10.26-USA-v.-CA-Amicus-Brieft-TRO-Filed.pdf).
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Original text here: https://americafirstpolicy.com/issues/afpi-files-amicus-brief-backing-doj-efforts-to-protect-election-integrity-in-california/
[Category: ThinkTank]
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AFPI Files Amicus Brief Backing DOJ Efforts to Protect Election Integrity in California
October 30, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The America First Policy Institute (AFPI) has filed an amicus brief in United States v. California, supporting the Department of Justice's (DOJ) efforts to protect election integrity after it identified more than 20,000 likely noncitizen voters in California.
AFPI's brief urges the court to require California officials to set aside ballots associated with these individuals ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 -- The America First Policy Institute issued the following news release: * * * AFPI Files Amicus Brief Backing DOJ Efforts to Protect Election Integrity in California October 30, 2026 WASHINGTON, D.C. - The America First Policy Institute (AFPI) has filed an amicus brief in United States v. California, supporting the Department of Justice's (DOJ) efforts to protect election integrity after it identified more than 20,000 likely noncitizen voters in California. AFPI's brief urges the court to require California officials to set aside ballots associated with these individualsuntil their citizenship can be verified, ensuring that only eligible Americans' votes are counted.
Every American deserves the confidence of knowing that their vote has been lawfully counted and is not diluted by fraudulently cast votes. The discovery of more than 20,000 potentially illegal votes erodes public trust and violates election integrity.
"Every vote matters. The Department of Justice is taking the necessary steps to protect the integrity of our elections, and AFPI is proud to stand alongside them with this amicus brief," said Chad Mizelle, AFPI Chair of Litigation. "Ensuring that only eligible citizens cast ballots is not a partisan issue. It is a fundamental obligation to the American people. No state should put politics ahead of election integrity."
AFPI's brief outlines the common-sense safeguards that will ensure that citizenship is verified, and that no lawfully cast ballots are lost. American elections cannot be free and fair without the required verifications made before ballots are counted. Read the full brief here (https://americafirstpolicy.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/2026.10.26-USA-v.-CA-Amicus-Brieft-TRO-Filed.pdf).
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Original text here: https://americafirstpolicy.com/issues/afpi-files-amicus-brief-backing-doj-efforts-to-protect-election-integrity-in-california/
[Category: ThinkTank]