David E. Sanger

But it even goes beyond that, Natalie, because there are sections of it that explicitly say that to make this work, we're going to kick other powers out of our region.

And that's code word for China.

Because in the past, Natalie, when the U.S.

turned its attention away from the Western Hemisphere—

when his focus was on China and the Indo-Pacific.

The irony is that the Chinese were moving into Latin America and really made huge inroads there economically.

And that makes it all the stranger that the document doesn't really name China specifically.

as the big player in the region.

And there's been some debate about why that is.

Some people think it was the work of Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary, who's trying to negotiate trade deals with China.

He doesn't want to particularly anger them before President Trump's scheduled visit to Beijing in April.

But what it certainly does is it suggests the U.S.

is going to boot out anybody who it thinks shouldn't be there.

Well, in some cases, the president has declared he wants Chinese companies physically out of, say, the Panama Canal, where he exaggerated the control of the Chinese military, which has very little presence there.

But what he really means is that by expanding the American economic presence, by making sure that everyone in the region buys American products and runs on American operating systems,

that basically he would squeeze out the Chinese and other competitors.

And of course, you travel in Latin America.

What do you see?

You see Huawei phones.

You see Chinese 5G networks.