Reassessing Biden administration policy toward Latin America between multilateral ambition and geopolitical constraints

This review examines the Biden administration’s strategic recalibration toward Latin America during 2021–2024, analyzing the transition from Trump-era ideological unilateralism to multilateral engagement grounded in economic pragmatism. Grounded in hegemonic transition theory, particularly the concept of managed adjustment under conditions of relative decline, the review applies a four-stage policy analysis framework across political-diplomatic, economic-commercial, and defense-security pillars to distinguish policy efficacy from broader strategic effectiveness. Synthesizing existing primary documentary sources, official trade statistics, and peer-reviewed scholarship, the review finds a pattern of moderate and structurally constrained effectiveness. At the level of efficacy, Biden’s policy successfully restored diplomatic credibility with ideologically diverse governments, generated measurable nearshoring momentum in the automotive sector, and expanded military cooperation networks across the hemisphere. At the level of effectiveness, however, the record is considerably less favorable: the administration failed to secure binding trade commitments, counter China’s structural penetration via dual-use infrastructure and telecommunications networks, or resolve persistent contradictions between democracy promotion and pragmatic accommodation of authoritarian partners. Comparative data further reveal that the U.S. merchandise trade deficit with the region more than doubled relative to the Trump period, while key indicators of multilateral commitment reflect continuity with prior baselines rather than distinctive expansion. These findings provide empirical support for the pessimistic strand of hegemonic transition theory: managed adjustment can slow a hegemon’s relative decline but cannot reverse it without the underlying structural capacity to match a rising challenger’s terms of engagement.