Maria Herrera Mellado on Rich Valdés Chinese Influence in Peru

Maria Herrera Mellado: "I was talking to a Peruvian lawyer the other day. I interviewed him, and he was saying the same thing.

Look, I’ve been doing a bit of research on this. So, the Chang Kai port—they’re basically selling entry and exit rights and all the space to the Chinese so they can control that part of the country and have more influence over Peru. But not only that, he mentioned that the owners of most of the minerals in Peru today are Chinese, that the owners of cities, the contracts—the biggest and most important public works contracts in Peru—are now being awarded to Chinese companies. So yes, they’re concerned.

And not only that, he made an interesting point. He said, “Maria, when people start complaining about Trump’s tariffs and what he’s doing to try to balance international trade, I ask my colleagues: How many American products, besides Apple, have you seen in Peru? How many? Tell me the last time you bought something from the United States.” And no one could answer that.

Now, if you’re in the U.S., you buy your fruit at Walmart, and you see it’s from Peru. There are a lot of Peruvian products in the U.S. The U.S. is open to all other nations and is always trying to welcome everyone. But there’s anti-Americanism, anti-imperialism in all these countries, and they don’t really respect the United States. They don’t. They don’t value what the U.S. has done for the rest of the world. Maybe the U.S. has stepped away from those countries a bit over the last two decades, and that’s why China is seeking influence. But people need to wake up. It’s really unfair how they view the U.S. and how warmly they embrace Nicolás Maduro, the Chinese, and all these communists."