Chile's Kast retreats on fuel prices as cost-of-living protests grow

Truckers’ highway blockade forces a fuel-price bill in Congress

Chilean President José Antonio Kast sent a bill to Congress on Friday to reverse planned fuel price rises, a retreat that ended a strike by the country’s truckers’ unions after they blockaded two major highways this week over high fuel prices. The bill is expected to be approved this month, but public anger over the cost of living continues to grow.

Kast’s approval rating has fallen to 24% after eight months in power. He won the presidency in December 2025 by avoiding mention of his strict conservative positions on social matters and instead emphasizing illegal immigration and public security, two issues amplified in the national media. Rather than pressing ahead with those priorities, NPR reported, he has floundered as rising costs of living hit him.

Fuel has been the flashpoint. In July, Kast’s government chose not to apply an anti-inflation tool available to the Chilean state to ease the rise in fuel prices brought about by the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. Protests exploded as prices shot up overnight, and motorists joined long queues at gas stations to fill their tanks before the increase took effect.

At a march in Santiago on Friday evening, Simón Echavarría, a 30-year-old architect, tied his grievances to wages and to the government’s broader record. “Our salaries are maybe 20% of a European income, but with a similar cost of living – it’s terrible,” Echavarría said. “We want to protest against the measures that have set us back on environmental issues, on human rights, even reducing the sentences of pedophiles – they are implementing things that nobody asked for.”

Behind him, heavily armed police blocked the streets and fired water cannons at protesters chanting and waving flags in the square.

Much of the recent anger stems from the revelation last month that Kast’s government had signed decrees cutting the sentences of 56 prisoners whose crimes range from the rape of children to dictatorship-era human rights violations. Kast has since called the decision an “error” but has continued to support the undersecretary who signed the decrees.

Affordability concerns run beneath the controversy. Patricia Pereira, a 30-year-old veterinarian at the Santiago march, said she was worried about cuts to science funding but that her discontent went deeper. “Here in Chile, it was a hard-won victory for children to have free education, achieved through protests, and now even that’s also being called into question,” Pereira said.

Kast’s budget proposal is now moving through Congress, with the government seeking cuts to education, culture, science and a host of social programs. Protests are likely to grow in Santiago if the government fails to address the rising cost of living, and Kast has shown little sign of doing so, NPR reported.

Chile’s pressure is part of a wider pattern across the Americas. Politicians who have aligned themselves with President Donald Trump face challenges similar to those confronting the U.S. administration, as rising fuel prices and the cost of everyday goods fuel public discontent. In Argentina, Javier Milei faces reelection in less than a year with 60% of the country disapproving of his leadership amid spiraling inflation. In Peru, President Keiko Fujimori faces growing discontent, with 53% disapproving of her government, according to a recent Ipsos poll.