It’s not just from tariffs.
Even before the Trump Administration’s announcements in early 2025, Latin America already had ongoing supply chain disruptions caused by:
- Outdated infrastructure that leads to congestion at key ports, bottlenecks in Pacific-Atlantic corridors, and limited cold-chain capacity
- Climate and weather shocks
- Security problems, such as cargo theft (for example, a transport vehicle is stolen every 38 minutes in Mexico)
- Regulatory instability
As such, supply chain disruption is a longer-term trend in the region that goes beyond 2026. In this piece, we’ll look at its impact on three key industries: logistics, mining, and energy.
Downstream Gains from Disruption in LatAm Logistics
One key issue that could lead to more supply chain disruption is whether the USMCA will continue. This free trade agreement between the US, Canada, and Mexico, is set to be renewed in 2026. It may not be. Or it may become a year-to-year agreement, reviewed annually before renewal. While it’s challenging to predict what will happen, we do know that Mexico’s exports to the US increased by 6.3% in the first half of 2025 compared to the first half of 2024. In fact, Mexico’s exports to the US reached US$425 billion from January to August 2025 and went up by 12% in September 2025 compared to September 2024, suggesting the country is on track to exceed its 2024 total of US$503 billion in exports to the US.
While the future of USMCA is undoubtedly a concern, the numbers suggest that trade between the US and Mexico has not been severely affected.
In fact, there could be benefits from Latin America as nearshoring extends beyond Mexico to other countries. The US is pushing countries to find alternative markets, suppliers, and buyers, which creates new routes and new service demands from shippers.
Given this, at AMI we recommend that companies — especially asset-heavy logistics players —look not just at Mexico, but also at Central America to identify potential trucking and potential customs partners in these markets. This could serve as a hedge in the event of substantial changes to USMCA — or it could lead to greater opportunities in general.
Global alliances are another disruptive factor for supply chains, though they receive less media coverage. For instance, due to US-led disruption, Mercosur and the European Union (EU) have been pushed to accelerate their ratification of a free trade agreement. That will create new opportunities because the EU’s deforestation rules may start to affect Brazilian exports. In addition, we may see logistics players expanding their compliance and consultative services for shippers. For example, these services could explore how logistics players can offer warehousing services for goods that are heading towards the EU, whether compliant or non-compliant.
As trade potentially slows down next year, we may see transshipment hubs returning to more normal operation levels because in 2025, the ports were very congested in Cartagena, Caucedo, Kingston, Callao and in Port of Spain, primarily due to front loading by companies after the US tariffs were suspended or delayed and because of empty containers sitting in the Caribbean. As a result, we may see a slower trade trend in 2026, which could help decongest some Caribbean hubs. That said, congestion will remain a key factor in 2026 and beyond due to ongoing infrastructure issues.
Opening Partnership Pathways in LatAm Mining
The supply chain disruption could have a positive impact on mining in Latin America. If shipping becomes unreliable or expensive, governments and businesses may look to capture more value at home — especially for rare earth minerals that are so crucial for modern technologies. To that end, we expect to see at least a dozen critical-metal processing plants built in Latin America in the next five years for lithium, rare earths, copper, nickel, and cobalt. We suggest positioning early through JVs or financing of refining projects in Canada, Brazil, Chile, or the U.S., securing offtake agreements and investing in midstream processing capacity that aligns with U.S. reshoring efforts and that can take advantage of grants, loans, and subsidies from Washington to secure non-Chinese supply chains.
Another effect of supply chain disruption will be more partnerships between state-run miners and majors, such as the lithium agreement between Codelco, Chile’s state-owner copper mining company, and Rio Tinto, which revolves around resources in northern Chile’s Salar de Maricunga. The structure of the US$900 million deal, one of the largest foreign investments in Chile’s lithium segment, could serve as a model for future lithium projects in the country. Our recommendation is for majors to establish these types of partnerships with state miners, offering capital, technology, or offtake commitments. Consolidation favors firms with scale and alliances so smaller players should align with bigger firms.
A third impact of the supply chain disruption will be stronger regulatory and procurement requirements for chain of custody, proof of non-reliance on suppliers from sanctioned or adversarial countries, and environmental compliance. Therefore, we recommend that companies invest in digital traceability systems and verifiable chain of custody solutions. In addition, companies should build compliance into project design. Firms that cannot prove trusted sourcing will risk exclusion, while those that can establish this are likely to obtain the premium contracts.
Political Re-Alignments May Spur Growth in Oil and Gas
Energy, like every industry that we’re dealing with here in our analysis, is a global industry. That’s why we have to look outside the region to understand the impact inside the region. And a great example of that is the flow of oil to U.S. refiners. Refineries in the U.S. produce more oil than is actually needed for the U.S. market. That’s why the U.S. exports a lot of refined oil products back to Mexico, throughout Latin America, into Canada, etc. And one of the primary sources of crude oil for those U.S. refiners, most of whom are in Louisiana and Texas, has been Canada. But given Canada’s political climate right now, the policymaking of Ottawa is to shift or to diversify its customer base. As a result, Canadian companies want to sell more of their oil to China and to other parts of the world.
In 2024 the Trans Mountain Expansion project came online, allowing Canadian companies to ship crude directly from Vancouver to Asia. In addition, a second pipeline to transport oil to Asia has been proposed by Alberta province, though it faces opposition from British Columbia.
If Canada significantly expands its exports to Asia, US refiners are going to need to source from elsewhere. They’ll get some of the crude they need from U.S. producers, but they’ll also be looking at other sources, such as Guyana, Suriname, Argentina, and even Venezuela, depending on how the political climate shifts in the latter. This could present opportunities for engineering firms and for supply or service companies.
Europe may also offer opportunities for Latin American energy companies. With the Ukraine-Russian war, Germany and other countries realized how dependent they were upon Russia for gas. This was not only politically damaging in Germany, it was also an expensive lesson learned by the entire continent. To replace that Russian oil, the Europeans turned mostly to the U.S., as well as Qatar and a few other producers, with a little bit more coming out of Norway. However, in the longer term, European governments want European utilities and gas companies to diversify their sourcing around the world. This will result in more exploration and investment from those European firms. Some of this is likely to be directed to gas fields in Latin America, which are still underexploited.
Lastly, we see the U.S. continuing to exploit its enormous resources in natural gas. There’s always been a political contest over whether more export terminals should be opened. The environmentalists on the left in the U.S. don’t want them opened, while the oil and gas industries do want to see more terminals opened. And with the present administration, we will see more. In fact, there are calls for a pipeline across Panama so that more U.S. LNG exports can reach Asian markets. This strong interest in helping the U.S. expand its LNG exports is a big threat to Trinidad. This is why Trinidad really has to invest in downstream if they want to survive against the U.S., which has cheaper gas.
Next Steps
Contact us to explore how we can identify opportunities for your company within the unfolding supply chain disruption in Latin America.
Our market intelligence will unlock specific opportunities, define their size and growth potential, explain how your company can get maximum advantage from it, identify the partners you should connect with, and let you know which of your competitors are looking at the same opportunities—and what they have planned.
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