José Antonio Kast strode into La Moneda on March 11 as Chile’s most conservative president since the return of democracy in 1990—and by Monday morning, five days later, construction equipment was already breaking ground on Chile’s northern border. The era of Gabriel Boric’s progressive government had ended. Chile’s new era, defined by border barriers, fiscal austerity, and a firmly pro-Washington foreign policy, had begun.
The Inauguration—and the Troubled Transition That Preceded It
Kast was sworn in at the National Congress in the coastal city of Valparaíso on Wednesday, March 11—marking Chile’s most pronounced shift to the right since the restoration of democracy. He received a landslide victory in the December runoff, winning 58.17% of the vote to Communist Party candidate Jeannette Jara’s 41.83%.
The ceremony was attended by a guest list that itself told the story of Chile’s new geopolitical direction. Argentina’s Javier Milei, Panama's José Raúl Mulino, Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa, Bolivia’s Rodrigo Paz, and Spain’s King Felipe VI were among the attendees—alongside Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado.
The handover from Boric, however, was anything but ceremonial. Kast abruptly ended the transition process in the days before the inauguration, following a clash with Boric over a project to install a submarine cable connecting Chile to China—a project that had drawn intense criticism from the United States, which sanctioned three Chilean transport ministry officials for what it described as compromising critical telecommunications infrastructure.
Boric disputed Kast’s characterization of events, telling the press that Kast had been informed of the project weeks prior. But analysts noted that Kast’s decision to halt transition talks—timed to coincide with his attendance at Trump’s Shield of the Americas summit in Miami days before the inauguration—was a deliberate signal to Washington that the incoming administration was drawing a sharp line between itself and the China-friendly policies of its predecessor.
Protests broke out on inauguration day in Valparaíso, with anti-government demonstrators taking to the streets as Kast was being sworn in. The demonstrations had been preceded by large marches on International Women’s Day, March 8—just three days before the ceremony—which drew the largest crowds since Chile’s 2019 popular uprising.
Feminist collective LASTESIS co-founder Sibila Sotomayor Van Rysseghem warned that “everything we believe in is in danger right now—women, queer people’s rights, migrant rights, Indigenous rights, the arts, culture, and activism.”
Mapuche organizations were also among the visible forces in the inauguration-day protests, raising alarms about the new administration’s approach to Indigenous land rights.
An Emergency Government—Six Decrees on Day One
Kast described his administration from the outset as an “emergency government”—a framing designed to convey a sense of crisis requiring immediate executive action. In his first hours in office, he signed six initial decrees focused on border control, public spending audits, reconstruction in fire-hit areas, and faster permitting—all measures drawn from a 90-day plan his team had prepared before the transfer of power.
On economic policy, Kast announced plans to cut ministry expenses by 3 percent to save $3 billion in 2026 and reduce the corporate tax rate to 23%—measures designed to signal fiscal discipline and pro-business governance to international investors who had grown wary of Boric’s reform-heavy agenda. Kast characterized the country he was inheriting as being “in worse conditions than we could have imagined”—an assessment directly aimed at Boric’s departing government, which polls rated as the worst-performing Chilean administration since the return of democracy.
Gabriel Boric left office as the worst-rated president since 1990, according to a survey published by polling firm Cadem the same week as the inauguration.
The Border Wall Begins
Less than a week into his presidency, Kast delivered on his most visible campaign promise. From Chile’s northern frontier area of Chacalluta—where large numbers of migrants have crossed from Peru into one of the region’s most prosperous nations—Kast oversaw preparations to build a physical barrier consisting of ditches, fences, and drone and military patrols.
“We have taken clear and concrete decisions to close our border to illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and organised crime,” he said. “We want to implement this without any delay.”
Chile’s foreign population doubled between 2017 and 2024. Over 300,000 foreigners without proper documentation are believed to be living in the country, many of them Venezuelans. In addition to families fleeing political persecution and economic collapse, foreign criminal gangs have settled in Chile in recent years—a dynamic that has brought carjackings, kidnappings, and contract killings previously unseen in the historically stable nation.
Large numbers of Venezuelans began attempting to leave Chile and enter Peru in the days following Kast’s election in December—responding to his explicit pledge to criminalize illegal immigration and pursue mass deportations.
Kast & Trump: Parallel Philosophies, Aligned Agendas
The political parallels between Kast and U.S. President Donald Trump are substantive, documented, and—on the Chilean president’s part—largely deliberate. Kast’s proposal to dig a moat along the Chile-Bolivia border has been directly compared to Trump’s support for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Both leaders have built their political identities around border security, immigration restriction, fiscal conservatism, and the rejection of what both describe as the progressive cultural agenda.
Even before taking office, Kast shaped a future for Chile far more aligned with Washington—attending Trump’s Shield of the Americas summit in Miami days before his own inauguration, standing alongside Milei, Bukele, and Noboa as the new cohort of right-wing Latin American leaders Washington is cultivating as partners in its campaign against cartels, Chinese influence, and authoritarian governments.
Trump openly signaled his preference for Kast during Chile’s presidential campaign—and the feeling was mutual. “Everything indicates a very significant alignment of Chile with the directives emanating from Washington,” said Gilberto Aranda, a political analyst at the University of Chile. Both leaders share a transactional view of international relationships, a preference for bilateral over multilateral frameworks, and a belief that strong border control and immigration enforcement are foundational to national security—not peripheral policy choices.
Francisco Urdinez, professor at the Catholic University of Chile, framed the challenge Kast faces clearly: “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, but everything else will be cut. 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.”
U.S.-Chile Relations: A Reset With Complications
Relations between Chile and the United States deteriorated significantly under Boric’s administration, with Boric at one point characterizing Trump’s leadership style as that of a “new emperor.”
The Chinese submarine cable dispute—which produced U.S. sanctions against Chilean officials weeks before Kast took office—represented the nadir of that relationship.
Kast’s arrival represents a genuine reset, and Washington knows it. The Shield of the Americas invitation, extended to Kast while he was still president-elect, was the clearest possible signal of Washington’s enthusiasm for Chile’s new direction. Kast’s alignment with Washington allows him to compensate for his lack of a congressional majority—White House support gives the Chilean president foreign policy weight that he can use to pressure centrists in Congress who might otherwise block his domestic agenda.
The Chinese cable dispute, however, has not been fully resolved—and managing the bilateral relationship with Beijing while deepening ties with Washington will require a careful balance. Chile depends on Chinese investment in its lithium sector, which is central to the country’s economic future. How Kast navigates that tension—between the Washington alignment that defines his political identity and the Chinese economic relationships that sustain Chile’s fiscal position—is the central foreign policy question of his first year in office.
A Divided Chile, A Clear Mandate
Dr. Isabella Flores, a sociologist at the University of Chile, put the electoral result in perspective: “The Chilean people have issued a clear verdict. They weren’t necessarily endorsing Kast’s ideology wholesale, but they were demanding a break from the perceived failures of the recent past. The desire for security and economic predictability outweighed the appeal of further progressive reforms for many voters.”
Kast governs without an absolute majority in Congress. The Senate is evenly divided, and the balance of power in the lower house rests with the populist Party of the People—a reality that will require him to build coalitions with centrist forces he has spent his career criticizing. His agenda for 2026 has accordingly been described by analysts as pragmatic and technocratic rather than ideologically maximalist—a deliberate choice to consolidate his emergency government narrative before opening deeper political fronts.
The protests on inauguration day, the women’s marches that preceded them, and the Mapuche organizations’ warnings about what a Kast presidency means for Indigenous rights all signal that the political opposition to his agenda is organized, vocal, and motivated. But Chile has made its choice, and it has made it through a substantial majority relative to other democratic countries in the region.
The real test of Kast’s emergency government begins not with the decrees signed in his first five days, but with whether he can deliver the security and economic improvement that 58% of Chileans voted for—without reopening the social fault lines that nearly tore the country apart in 2019.
