sChina was recentlyadmitted as an observer to the Andean Community — a political and economic block consisting of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru and one of the Americas’ numerous organizations and forums.

Getting increasingly nervous about Chinese influence, U.S. policymakers made a concerted effort to limit the CCP's engagement in the Inter-American Development Bank and some even raised concerns about potential — albeit unconfirmed — ties between China and the recently elected secretary general of the Organization of American States. Now, with China starting to engage in another regional organization, analysts already warn it could serve as a conduit for expanding AI and electric vehicle sales into South America.

However, rather than simply seeking to deny China entry into regional affairs, the United States needs to develop policies to better engage with the region. China’s presence in the Andean Community is not an isolated diplomatic gesture — it reflects a deliberate, decades-long strategy to reshape governance norms and economic integration in the Americas. Washington’s failure to understand this strategy — and offer credible alternatives — risks ceding influence in its own hemisphere.

On Monday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a framework agreement with He Lifeng, China’s top economic official, to save TikTok despite a 2024 law aimed at banning it from Americans’ phones. Donald Trump and Xi Jinping are scheduled to speak on Friday to finalize the deal.

The announcement raised hopes not just for preserving Americans’ access to one of the most popular apps in the world, but also for real progress in the fraught relationship between the world’s two most powerful countries — a relationship that seemed headed toward serious conflict just five months ago.

Then, on Wednesday, reports emerged that Chinese regulators had directed China’s major tech companies to stop purchasing Nvidia-made AI chips. Suddenly the possibility of productive relations was again thrown into doubt.

It’s certainly too soon to proclaim a new start to the relationship. But it’s also premature to accept the self-serving contention of those pushing conflict that China holds only ill intent. Trump could all too easily return to the Biden administration’s strategy — the same one that most of his advisers support — which would lead to a permanent rupture and a new era of great power conflict. But Trump could still choose a modus vivendi with China, if he is willing to focus his diplomats on a new framework for trade and investment on both sides.

The origins of the TikTok expropriation bill lie in the hothouse atmosphere of bipartisan China animosity that dominated thinking in the prior two U.S. administrations. Officials in the first Trump term, taking advantage of their boss’s trade grievances, seized their opening to press a very different agenda of systematic geopolitical confrontation. Where Trump merely wanted to shift the terms of trade toward the United States and display his own power, his neoconservative and militarist advisers believed that the U.S. and China are locked in an existential struggle for control over the global system.

The Biden administration assumed that same framework — institutionalizing it, extending it, and pressuring U.S. allies to join it. To Biden officials, restricting and excluding China was not only essential to maintaining American primacy but also the key to renewing American economic dynamism and marginalizing populist challengers of the right and left.

Once thinking in both parties defined China as an irredeemable adversary, politicians started competing to advance the most antagonistic measures. (...)