Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.
The highlights this week: Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa visits China, Venezuela’s interim government agrees to a prisoner release amid U.S.-brokered talks with the opposition, and Brazil’s state oil company makes a new oil discovery.
Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa is on a weeklong state visit to China, his second trip to the country since the start of his term last year.
The right-wing president has embraced a close partnership with the Trump administration, which in word and deed is pushing back against Chinese economic ties in Latin America. But despite that pressure, Noboa is trying to shore up relations with Beijing, advancing Ecuador’s participation in the Belt and Road Initiative and seeking more trade and investment from China.
Ecuador is “a friend on the other side of the Pacific that you can count on,” Noboa said in Beijing this week.
