On Wednesday, March 11, the ultra-conservative José Antonio Kast took office as president of Chile. Kast won the presidency after defeating the candidate of the center-left coalition Unidad Por Chile, Jeannette Jara, in the second round. In the first round, Jara received 26.85% of the votes, while Kast received 23.93%; in third place was center-right Franco Parisi, who received 19.71%.

However, Jara, the candidate supported by then-President Boric, failed to secure the number of votes needed to defeat a right wing that was divided in the first round but which, in the second round, rallied almost unanimously behind Kast, who won a landslide victory with 58.17% of the vote to Jara’s 41.83%.

The inauguration was attended by the presidents of Ecuador (Daniel Noboa), Argentina (Javier Milei), Paraguay (Santiago Peña), Uruguay (Yamandú Orsi), Bolivia (Rodrigo Paz), Panama (José Raúl Mulino), Honduras (Nasry Asfura), and Costa Rica (Rodrigo Chaves). The King of Spain, Felipe VI, also attended. With the exception of Orsi, all the other Latin American presidents, including Kast, belong to the new military alliance promoted and led by the Trump administration, known as Shield of the Americas.

In his inauguration speech, Kast reiterated the two elements that won him the presidency: security and economic recovery.  Chile’s new far-right president has under this premise called for an “emergency government.”

During his campaign, Kast promised to strengthen borders and expel all irregular migrants from Chile. In economic terms, he has promised greater liberalization of the Chilean economy, further promoting foreign investment, fostering and defending the private sector, and reducing the size of the state.

A shift in rhetoric to win the presidency

In fact, to gain support, Kast, a lawyer by profession and former legislator, avoided a mistake he had already made in his electoral battle with Boric, to whom he lost in the second round in 2021: he avoided talking about controversial issues such as abortion, feminism, global warming, and Pinochet’s bloody military dictatorship (1973-1990). Instead, he focused on the issues of security and economic recovery, supported by an ideological discourse closer to a mixture of Milei’s economic ultraliberalism and Trump’s anti-immigration project.

In previous electoral processes, Kast had appealed to a radicalized right-wing electorate that, to a large extent, allowed him to secure a kind of ideological loyalty. Kast had declared himself totally opposed to abortion, radically Catholic, and had maintained favorable opinions of dictator General Augusto Pinochet, who set Chile on the path to neoliberalism with the help of the Chicago Boys after the coup d’état against socialist President Salvador Allende.

Pinochet’s dictatorship is among the bloodiest in the region: nearly 3,000 dead and tens of thousands tortured and imprisoned for political reasons. As a result, opinions in Chile are divided between those who support the actions of the general who came to power with the backing of the United States and those who abhor him for his proven human rights violations.

In this regard, Kast sought to garner the support of other Chilean right-wingers who believe that Boric’s government has slowed economic growth and, along with previous governments, has relaxed Chile’s immigration policy. In addition, Kast relied on the evident erosion of the outgoing government, of which Jara unwittingly became the main defender. It should not be forgotten that the Boric administration lost the referendum to transform the Pinochetist constitution.

In addition, he has relied on the momentum that the new right-wing parties have brought to regional politics, also supported by Trump’s victory, which is, in a way, a unifying element among them.

However, Kast’s strategy, effective in the short term, could bring him certain economic and political problems in the future, such as the need to form broader alliances with centrist sectors of the Concertación, such as the Christian Democrats, at some unspecified point in the future.

The truth is that, for now, Kast has relied to a certain extent on independents to form his government. Only four ministers belong to political parties. But there is also a unified composition in ideological terms. Jorge Quiroz, an ultra-liberal economist, will be minister of finance, while Trinidad Steinert will take over public security and Claudio Alvarado will be minister of the interior. The minister for women will be Judith Marin, a declared anti-abortionist. Likewise, his cabinet includes two lawyers who defended Pinochet.

Thus, while Kast’s rhetoric seems to call for unity and cooperation among different political sectors and avoids certain controversial issues, he maintains a clearly ultra-conservative and ultra-liberal agenda that could complicate his government’s outlook if he fails to reach certain minimum agreements with other national and international political forces.

Kast and the geopolitical predicament

At 60, Kast becomes Chile’s first president who is not part of the center-left or center-right, which poses a major challenge, considering the legislative composition that will not allow him to govern without consensus.

However, Kast has the support of Washington and several countries in the region whose governments identify with Trump’s hemispheric security policy (Kast was invited to the Shield of the Americas summit in Miami before taking office), such as Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Ecuador, Panama, Honduras, and El Salvador, among others.

Read more: The Angry Tide has washed into Chile

On the other hand, this will also pose a greater challenge for Kast’s administration. The United States demands the withdrawal of Chinese presence and capital from Latin America, considering Latin America to be its sphere of influence (Monroe Doctrine). For Chile, this poses a serious problem. China is Chile’s main trading partner (32.7% of its trade balance is with the Asian country), and several Chilean business leaders are demanding that good relations with Beijing be maintained.

Chile is one of the few countries in Latin America, along with Peru and Costa Rica, that has free trade agreements with both China and the United States, the South American country’s second largest trading partner (17% of trade).

However, Kast downplayed concerns and said during his recent stay in Miami, where the Shield of the Americas agreement was signed: “It is not incompatible to have the best relations with China and the United States … I don’t see what the concern is … We will take all appropriate measures to safeguard our sovereignty, our security, and our trade relations.”

However, most experts agree that Chile’s economic situation and Kast’s ideological and geopolitical alignment with Trump could cause tensions that the Chilean government could see worsening if it does not adopt an appropriate strategy.

This was expressed to the BBC by Francisco Urdinez, professor at the Catholic University of Chile: “The globalized world, based on clear rules, no longer exists … In my opinion, Kast is already clear about what is non-negotiable, which is the interests of Chilean business and trade, to put it simply, but everything else will be cut. Why will it be cut? Because each of those projects or initiatives puts you in a very complicated position with the United States… The situation is the most difficult for a Chilean president since the return of democracy.”

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