Shift to the appropriate in Chile: Kast sworn in as new president | EUROtoday

As of: March 12, 2026 • 5:25 a.m

Chile’s new President Kast, like his function mannequin Trump, received with an election marketing campaign in opposition to immigrants and crime. This continues the shift to the appropriate in Latin America – German business sees a chance.

The one on the left: 40 years younger, he got here with no tie, the highest button of his shirt undone. The different, to his proper, 60, with a straight grey parting on the aspect, the blue knot of his tie below his neck.

It was greater than only a handover of workplace within the Congress of the Chilean coastal metropolis of Valparaíso: Chile has chosen a radical change. Gabriel Boric, a former scholar chief who represented a left-wing, inexperienced and social agenda, is adopted by 60-year-old José Antonio Kast, a conservative, religious Catholic, the son of a German Wehrmacht officer, who made no secret of his admiration for the previous navy dictator Pinochet and is now looking for solidarity with the brand new world proper.

Kast guarantees “emergency government”

In his first official handle, he paints the legacy of his predecessors within the darkest of tones and guarantees an “emergency government” that focuses on order, safety and financial progress. “An emergency government is not an empty phrase,” stated Kast late within the night from the Moneda Palace within the capital Santiago. “It creates order in chaos. It brings relief in suffering. It ensures a crackdown where impunity reigns. And it offers real, concrete and possible hope for all those who have been ignored for too long.”

With Kast taking workplace in Chile, one other nation in Latin America is transferring far to the appropriate. Like US President Donald Trump, he received with an election marketing campaign in opposition to immigrants and crime. The weekend earlier than taking workplace, Kast traveled to Florida for a gathering known as “The Shield of the Americas” known as “Schild Amerikas”.

There, Trump introduced a regional “military coalition to eradicate criminal cartels.” “We’ll use missiles. If you want us to,” stated Trump throughout his speech, “they’re extremely precise. Pium – straight into your living room. That’s it for the cartel person.” Kast applauded alongside different right-wing Latin American leaders corresponding to Argentina’s President Javier Milei and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele.

Trump-style election marketing campaign

Statistically talking, Chile remains to be one of many most secure and most steady nations in Latin America. However, as in every single place within the area, organized crime, for instance offshoots of the Venezuelan group “Tren de Aragua”, has now turn out to be widespread there. In the as soon as quiet Chile there have been instantly extortions, hostage-taking and contract killings. More than 60 % of Chileans now not really feel protected.

During the election marketing campaign, Kast efficiently linked the difficulty to Chileans’ considerations about irregular immigration. There are round two million immigrants within the nation with a inhabitants of 19 million – primarily Venezuelans who fled the disaster and oppression of their homeland, round 300,000 of them with out official papers. As president, he would deport them, if vital with nothing however their garments on his individual, Kast introduced throughout the election marketing campaign in Trump type.

“It hinders integration”

He didn’t present any proof that they have been concerned in crimes above common. Yngrid Becerra believes that one thing like this poisons social cohesion and disregards the humanity of migrants. Eleven years in the past she fled the socialist regime in Venezuela; as we speak she works with needy Chilean seniors on the Catholic aid group Fundación de Rosas.

“We are people who work here, pay taxes, support society.” Kast’s dialogue scares her: “It hinders integration because it excludes and discriminates against us.”

flip within the Economic coverage

But it’s this discourse with which Kast was in a position to clearly win the election and his voters are actually demanding concrete motion – additionally within the financial system. Contrary to Kast’s pessimism, it is usually doing fairly properly in regional comparability: it’s thought-about aggressive and productive, though with robust social disparities and fewer robust progress than a couple of years in the past.

While Boric lowered weekly working hours and elevated the minimal wage, Kast is now promising to cut back paperwork and pace up approval procedures – in brief: a business-friendly and market-liberal financial coverage.

Neither Trump nor Milei

Many German entrepreneurs in Chile additionally see this as a chance, particularly given the present world scenario. “Chile has a wide range of raw materials, strategic raw materials – be it lithium, be it copper – that contribute significantly to the energy transition. The ideal partner or the ideal partner country,” says Ludwig Hecker, managing director of Soilfe, a Chile-based companion of a machine manufacturing unit from Emsbüren. Among different issues, they produce mining machines for copper mining.

Kast is neither a Trump nor a Milei or Bolsonaro, says Cornelia Sonnenberg, managing director of the German-Chilean Chamber of Commerce. Germany would do properly to method him with an open thoughts.

However, Germany and Europe are late to the sport and have relied on the partnership with the USA for too lengthy, says economist Marcela Vera. China is now Chile’s most necessary buying and selling companion. But “Made in Germany” remains to be extremely valued, say German entrepreneurs. They see the brand new Kast authorities as a chance.

Which caste will rule?

The Venezuelan nurse Yngrid Becerra, but additionally hundreds of individuals who demonstrated on Chile’s streets on International Women’s Day on March 8, are nervous about the way forward for their nation. There have been dozens of posters depicting Kast as a puppet of US President Trump. The appointment of an evangelical abortion opponent as the brand new ladies’s and equal alternatives minister can also be inflicting alarm.

The first bulletins that Kast made on migration and safety on the night of the swearing-in in Santiago initially sounded extra reasonable than the discourse throughout the election marketing campaign. The political analyst and author Patricio Fernández stays ready; like many, he wonders which Kast is definitely in energy: “Will it be a conciliatory Kast, in the spirit of Chile’s political tradition, which relies on compromise and less confrontation – or will we experience a confrontational, contentious and harsh Kast?”

The reality is: he presents himself as a part of the spectrum of the brand new world and populist proper, says Fernández. But it is usually a indisputable fact that he comes from a way more conservative custom on the Chilean proper and that it’s this proper that helps him in Congress.