The Era of Trump in Latin America: Month One
Many have sought to characterize President Donald Trump’s foreign policy as isolationist and xenophobic, especially towards Latin America and the Middle East. While this assessment is hard to refute, it is important to analyze how and why his administration has sought to achieve its policy goals towards Latin America during its first month in office.
Surprisingly, President Trump’s first action towards Latin America was not his executive order to construct an additional wall on the border with the U.S.’s third largest trading partner. Instead, the administration’s first move occurred during U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s confirmation process. Tillerson wrote to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he would seek to review U.S. financial and technical support for Colombia’s groundbreaking peace deal with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC). Whether Trump will withdraw key funds necessary to maintain a lasting peace in Colombia remains unclear. However, the notion that Tillerson believes the U.S. should pull its funds out of Colombia marks a clear break from the pragmatic and cooperative style that the Obama administration adopted towards the region.
Most of President Trump’s decisions regarding Latin America have dealt with his border wall, NAFTA, and more broadly, Mexico. On January 25, he signed an executive order to begin the immediate construction of a wall across the full length of the U.S. border with Mexico using existing Department of Homeland Security funds, thereby bypassing Congress. Two days of hostility between Mexican officials and the White House transpired as President Trump repeated to publicly claim that Mexico would pay for the eleven-billion-dollar wall. Administration Press Secretary Sean Spicer echoed this claim by stating that President Trump could pay for this project with a 20 percent important tax on Mexican goods. The saga eventually culminated in an equally hostile manner when, on a phone call between Mexican President Peña Nieto and President Trump, the White House reportedly threatened that it could send federal troops over the border to fight the war on drugs.
Overall, it is unclear if the Trump administration’s actions towards Latin America during his first month in office are guided by one foreign policy ideology. It is possible that rather than developing any logical foreign policy objective, the administration is still in campaign mode. In this way, President Trump may be maintaining the aggressive and isolationist rhetoric toward the region that he used during the campaign to maintain his voter base, thus feeding their cultural disaffection and economic angst.
However, President Trump’s actions have clearly broken with long-standing U.S. foreign policy goals in Latin America. In the last few decades, the U.S. government has increased integration with the region, especially with Colombia and Mexico. While integration has historically had drawbacks (such as human rights abuses associated with Plan Colombia), this foreign policy objective has largely led to improved diplomatic relations and economic growth. The Trump administration’s stance regarding Colombia and Mexico has serious implications for the prosperity of the two countries, as well as for the United States’ standing in the region in general. President Trump’s actions and aggressive rhetoric are not only reversing President Obama’s policy of pragmatic engagement, but are also stirring up old fears amongst the Latin American populous of U.S. imperialist hegemony. Unprecedented in recent history, roughly 30,000 Mexicans protested Trump’s rhetoric and actions towards their country on February 12.
In the coming months, it will be important to closely monitor how President Trump reacts to bipartisan legislation from the Congressional Cuba Working Group, who are aimed at engaging with the island rather than isolating it from the world. The administration will also face the challenge of increasing anti-imperialist rhetoric coming from Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro. On February 13, the U.S. Treasury Department listed Venezuelan Vice-President Tareck El Aissami as a drug kingpin for overseeing planes and ships that exported cocaine to the U.S. A bipartisan group of 34 senators have asked President Trump to place sanctions on El Aissami. In response to these two situations, the White House could begin to repair some of the damage that it has caused to U.S.-Latin American relations. President Trump must change his aggressive rhetoric; support the bipartisan effort to engage with Cuba; and attempt a multilateral response to Venezuela’s political crisis rather than relying on combative diplomacy.
