Where is the seminar being held?

The seminar is taking place in Santiago, CHL.

What is the primary focus of the seminar?

The seminar focuses on CHL's foreign policy from 2026 to 2030, addressing challenges in the new global scenario.

Seminario "Política exterior chilena 2026-2030: los desafíos ante el nuevo escenario global"

Name: Seminario "Política exterior chilena 2026-2030: los desafíos ante el nuevo escenario global"
Start: 2026-06-04T00:00:00Z
End: 2026-06-04T00:00:00Z
Location: Santiago

Jun 4, 2026Santiago, ChileIn-person

Registration open

The seminar "Chilean Foreign Policy 2026-2030: Challenges in the New Global Scenario" convenes in Santiago, CHL, to analyze the future direction of CHL's international relations. This event focuses on understanding and adapting to the evolving global landscape, which presents both opportunities and complexities for the country's foreign policy. Experts and policymakers gather to discuss strategic approaches and potential responses to international developments, aiming to shape CHL's engagement on the world stage for the upcoming years. The discussions will likely cover a range of geopolitical, economic, and social factors influencing CHL's position.

Committees & topics

Topics
Chilean Foreign Policy 2026-2030 · Geopolitics of a Fragmenting Global Order · Global Trade and the Erosion of the Multilateral System · Economic Growth and Chile's Productivity Challenge · Foreign Direct Investment and the Critical-Minerals Race · Market Diversification Beyond Commodity Dependence · Security: Transnational Crime and the New Defense Agenda · Trust, Democratic Legitimacy and Chile's International Credibility

Why it matters

This seminar is crucial for understanding how a middle power like CHL navigates an increasingly complex international system. The focus on the period through 2030 highlights a proactive approach to foreign policy formulation, anticipating shifts rather than merely reacting to them. This forward-looking perspective is vital for national stability and economic prosperity, as CHL seeks to secure its interests and promote its values globally.

The discussions in Santiago, CHL, offer insights into the strategic thinking within CHL regarding its regional and global partnerships. By examining the challenges and opportunities, the seminar contributes to a more informed and resilient foreign policy framework. This is particularly relevant given the dynamic nature of international relations, where traditional alliances and power structures are continually being re-evaluated.

How to prepare

To effectively engage with the themes of this seminar, participants should undertake a thorough analysis of contemporary global trends, particularly those impacting South America. Understanding the nuances of CHL's current foreign policy objectives and its historical diplomatic engagements is essential. Consider how CHL balances its relationships with major global powers and its regional neighbors, and how these dynamics might evolve.

Attendees could benefit from preparing a Dynamic Analysis of key geopolitical shifts, focusing on their potential implications for CHL. Additionally, a What Is Stakeholder Mapping? exercise, perhaps extending to Hidden Stakeholders, could illuminate the various actors influencing CHL's foreign policy decisions and the broader international environment. This preparation will allow for more substantive contributions to the discussions on future challenges and strategies.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 5 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Chile

Proactively shaping its foreign policy for the next years, adapting to global changes.

Role in topic

As the host nation, CHL is the central focus of the seminar, examining its own foreign policy challenges and opportunities in the global arena.

Brazil

Significant regional partner whose foreign policy shifts impact CHL's regional strategy.

Role in topic

BRA's foreign policy decisions and economic trajectory have direct implications for regional stability and CHL's strategic considerations in South America.

Argentina

Key neighbor with shared regional interests and potential for bilateral cooperation or divergence.

Role in topic

ARG's political and economic developments are crucial for CHL's border security, trade relations, and regional integration efforts.

United States

Major global power influencing CHL's economic and security policies.

Role in topic

The foreign policy of the USA significantly impacts global trade, security architectures, and international norms, all of which CHL must consider in its own strategy.

China

Growing economic partner and geopolitical actor, presenting both opportunities and challenges for CHL.

Role in topic

CHN's increasing economic presence and geopolitical influence in Latin America are a significant factor for CHL's trade, investment, and diplomatic diversification strategies.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Chilean Foreign Policy 2026-2030

Chile has long projected itself internationally as a small, open, rules-based economy anchored in Latin America but globally connected. Since its return to democracy in 1990, successive governments — across the Concertación, the right-wing Piñera administrations, and Gabriel Boric's government — have sustained a broadly continuous foreign policy built on multilateralism, free trade agreements, human rights diplomacy, and active participation in regional forums such as the Pacific Alliance, Prosur, and CELAC. Santiago's network of trade accords, including agreements with the United States, the European Union, China, Mercosur partners, and CPTPP members, is among the densest of any middle-income state. The core debate now is how Chile should recalibrate that traditional posture amid a more contested global order: US-China strategic rivalry, the erosion of WTO disciplines, war in Europe and the Middle East, and growing regional instability in South America. Chile's heavy economic exposure to China (its largest trading partner) coexists with deep institutional and security ties to the United States and Europe, generating pressure to define an 'active non-alignment' or hedging strategy. Domestically, migration, transnational organized crime, and lithium and critical-minerals policy have pulled foreign policy closer to internal security and industrial policy debates. The 2026-2030 cycle will fall to a new administration that must articulate priorities on Antarctica, the South Pacific, Bolivia and Peru relations, integration with Argentina, and Chile's role in global governance reform. The seminar's underlying question is whether Chilean diplomacy can preserve its reputation for predictability and openness while adapting to a world where geoeconomics, security, and values increasingly overlap.

Key players

Geopolitics of a Fragmenting Global Order

The post-Cold War unipolar moment has given way to a more fragmented international system characterized by intensifying US-China competition, a revisionist Russia waging war in Ukraine, and middle powers such as India, Brazil, Turkey, and the Gulf states asserting greater autonomy. Institutions designed in 1945 — the UN Security Council, the Bretton Woods bodies, the WTO — face credibility challenges, while new groupings (an expanded BRICS+, the Quad, AUKUS, IPEF) reshape alignments around technology, security, and finance. For Latin America, and Chile in particular, this fragmentation translates into harder choices. Critical-minerals supply chains, semiconductor controls, port and 5G infrastructure decisions, and votes in multilateral forums have become arenas of great-power pressure. Simultaneously, conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have demonstrated how regional wars can disrupt energy, food, and shipping markets globally. The debate for 2026-2030 centers on how a small, trade-dependent democracy should position itself: deeper alignment with Western democracies on values and security, pragmatic equidistance to preserve commercial access, or selective coalitions with like-minded middle powers to defend multilateral rules. The choice will shape Chile's voice on issues ranging from Taiwan and Ukraine to Antarctic governance and ocean security.

Key players

Global Trade and the Erosion of the Multilateral System

Global trade has entered a phase of slower growth, rising protectionism, and politicized supply chains. The WTO's dispute-settlement Appellate Body has been paralyzed since 2019, US-China tariff and technology measures have proliferated, and industrial policies such as the US Inflation Reduction Act and the EU's Green Deal Industrial Plan and CBAM are reshaping incentives for investment and exports. 'Friend-shoring,' 'de-risking,' and export controls on semiconductors and critical minerals have moved trade policy closer to national security. Chile is a paradigmatic open economy: trade represents roughly 60% of GDP, and the country maintains preferential access to markets covering most of the world economy through the Pacific Alliance, CPTPP, the modernized EU agreement, and bilateral FTAs with the US, China, and others. That openness has delivered growth and integration but also exposes Chile to external shocks, commodity-price swings, and now to regulatory measures abroad — notably CBAM and critical-minerals sourcing rules — that affect copper, lithium, salmon, fruit, and wine exports. The key question for 2026-2030 is whether Chile can continue to defend an open, rules-based trading order while adapting to a world where major partners use trade tools for strategic ends. Options include deeper plurilateral cooperation (CPTPP enlargement, DEPA), modernizing existing FTAs around digital trade, labor and environment, and coordinating with like-minded middle powers to preserve WTO functions.

Key players

Economic Growth and Chile's Productivity Challenge

Chile experienced one of the most successful growth runs in Latin America between 1990 and 2013, roughly tripling per-capita income and sharply reducing poverty. Since then, however, trend growth has decelerated to around 2% per year, productivity gains have stagnated, and successive shocks — the 2019 social uprising, the pandemic, high inflation in 2022, and political uncertainty around constitutional reform — have weighed on investment. The economy remains heavily dependent on copper and a narrow set of natural-resource exports. Globally, the growth environment for 2026-2030 will be shaped by higher-for-longer interest rates in advanced economies, China's structural slowdown, the energy transition, demographic aging, and AI-driven productivity shifts. For Chile, this means that the commodity supercycle tailwind that powered earlier decades is unlikely to return in the same form, even if lithium and green hydrogen offer new opportunities. The policy debate centers on how to lift potential growth: regulatory simplification ('permisología'), human capital and STEM education, R&D investment (still below 0.4% of GDP), infrastructure, and integration of women and migrants into the labor market. Foreign policy intersects this agenda through trade, investment promotion, science and technology cooperation, and the country's ability to attract talent.

Key players

Foreign Direct Investment and the Critical-Minerals Race

Chile has historically been among the top destinations for foreign direct investment in Latin America, with stocks concentrated in mining, energy, financial services, and retail. Stable institutions, a credible central bank, and a dense FTA network supported decades of inflows. Since 2019, however, political and regulatory uncertainty — constitutional debates, new royalty and tax frameworks, permitting delays — has coincided with a global reshuffling of investment toward strategic sectors: semiconductors, batteries, clean energy, and critical minerals. The global energy transition has placed Chile at the center of competition for lithium, copper, and green hydrogen investment. The National Lithium Strategy launched in 2023, which envisages a public-private model with state participation through Codelco and Enami, has reframed the terms of entry for foreign investors. At the same time, US, European, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese firms are competing for offtake agreements and equity stakes, often under home-country industrial-policy constraints (IRA sourcing rules, EU Critical Raw Materials Act). The central question is how Chile can attract long-horizon, value-adding investment — not only extraction but processing, refining, and clean-tech manufacturing — while preserving regulatory predictability, environmental standards, and community consent, particularly with Indigenous communities in the Atacama salt flats.

Key players

Market Diversification Beyond Commodity Dependence

Despite an FTA network covering most of the global economy, Chilean exports remain concentrated in a small number of products and destinations. Copper accounts for roughly half of goods exports, China absorbs around 35-40% of total exports, and the top five products represent the bulk of foreign sales. This concentration leaves the economy exposed to swings in Chinese demand and to commodity-price cycles, as the 2014-2016 downturn and the 2022-2023 copper correction illustrated. Diversification has both a geographic and a sectoral dimension. Geographically, Chile has sought to deepen ties with Southeast Asia through CPTPP, with India through ongoing negotiations to upgrade the existing PTA, and with the Gulf and Africa through emerging dialogues. Sectorally, the agenda emphasizes services exports, the digital economy, lithium derivatives, green hydrogen and ammonia, specialty foods, and the creative industries. For 2026-2030, the debate is how to convert market access on paper into actual exporter diversification: improving logistics and port infrastructure, supporting SMEs, modernizing ProChile's promotion model, and aligning trade policy with industrial and innovation strategies. The risk of overreliance on any single partner — economic or geopolitical — has made diversification a question of resilience as much as commerce.

Key players

Security: Transnational Crime and the New Defense Agenda

Chile traditionally enjoyed one of the lowest crime rates and most professional security forces in Latin America, with defense policy focused on territorial integrity, peacekeeping, and Antarctic and maritime presence. Over the past five years, however, the country has experienced a sharp rise in homicide rates, the entrenchment of transnational criminal organizations (notably Tren de Aragua), increased migratory pressure on the northern border, and high-profile cases linking organized crime to neighboring countries. The external dimension of this shift is significant. Cooperation with Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, the United States, and the EU on intelligence sharing, asset recovery, and migration management has become central to Chilean foreign policy. At the same time, classical defense issues persist: maritime delimitation legacies with Peru and Bolivia, growing interest in the South Pacific and Antarctica, cyber defense, and the modernization of the armed forces under tighter fiscal constraints. The 2026-2030 horizon will require Chile to articulate a more integrated security doctrine that connects internal security, border management, defense modernization, and international cooperation, while safeguarding human rights and democratic civilian control of security institutions.

Key players

Trust, Democratic Legitimacy and Chile's International Credibility

Trust has become a strategic variable for Chilean foreign policy. Domestically, surveys show historically low confidence in political parties, Congress, and other institutions, a trend that crystallized in the 2019 social uprising and the two failed constitutional processes of 2022 and 2023. Internationally, Chile's reputation for institutional stability, fiscal discipline, and predictable rule of law has long been a core diplomatic and economic asset, underpinning sovereign ratings, FDI inflows, and influence in multilateral forums. The global context compounds the challenge. Democratic backsliding, disinformation, foreign interference in elections, and AI-generated content are eroding public trust across democracies. In Latin America, polarization, weakening of independent institutions, and the rise of organized crime have pushed several countries toward more authoritarian or populist responses. Chile's ability to remain a credible voice on human rights, democratic governance, and rules-based multilateralism depends on how it manages its own internal legitimacy. For 2026-2030, the agenda includes rebuilding civic trust, defending electoral integrity, strengthening transparency and anti-corruption frameworks, and projecting these values externally — for example through the Summit for Democracy process, the Community of Democracies (historically chaired by Chile), and engagement on AI governance and information integrity at the UN and OECD.

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for Seminario "Política exterior chilena 2026-2030: los desafíos ante el nuevo escenario global".

Recent reporting to ground your prep

West Bengal Voter Deletion Crisis 2026

West Bengal Voter Deletion Crisis

Delimitation Based on 2011 Census

Supreme Court Upholds Election Commission Dis

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Stakeholder Mapping Workshop

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

Policy Brief Writing

Conflict Resolution

Chile June 2026

By committee

Frequently asked questions

Seminario "Política exterior chilena 2026-2030: los desafíos ante el nuevo escenario global"

Jun 4, 2026Santiago, ChileIn-person

Registration open

Committees & topics

Topics
Chilean Foreign Policy 2026-2030 · Geopolitics of a Fragmenting Global Order · Global Trade and the Erosion of the Multilateral System · Economic Growth and Chile's Productivity Challenge · Foreign Direct Investment and the Critical-Minerals Race · Market Diversification Beyond Commodity Dependence · Security: Transnational Crime and the New Defense Agenda · Trust, Democratic Legitimacy and Chile's International Credibility

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 5 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Chile

Proactively shaping its foreign policy for the next years, adapting to global changes.

Role in topic

As the host nation, CHL is the central focus of the seminar, examining its own foreign policy challenges and opportunities in the global arena.

Brazil

Significant regional partner whose foreign policy shifts impact CHL's regional strategy.

Role in topic

BRA's foreign policy decisions and economic trajectory have direct implications for regional stability and CHL's strategic considerations in South America.

Argentina

Key neighbor with shared regional interests and potential for bilateral cooperation or divergence.

Role in topic

ARG's political and economic developments are crucial for CHL's border security, trade relations, and regional integration efforts.

United States

Major global power influencing CHL's economic and security policies.

Role in topic

The foreign policy of the USA significantly impacts global trade, security architectures, and international norms, all of which CHL must consider in its own strategy.

China

Growing economic partner and geopolitical actor, presenting both opportunities and challenges for CHL.

Role in topic

CHN's increasing economic presence and geopolitical influence in Latin America are a significant factor for CHL's trade, investment, and diplomatic diversification strategies.