The Impact of the Second Trump Administration on Latin American Foreign Policy

In the last US National Security Strategy, President Trump clearly outlined the return of the Monroe Doctrine for Latin America. The 1823 Monroe Doctrine, now updated by the so-called Trump Corollary, claimed that the Western Hemisphere belonged to the US as its own backyard and that no foreign power, particularly a European one, should be involved in the region. Today, the recipient of the Doctrine is clearly China, which is the leading trading partner of several Latin American countries. Since January 20, 2025, the Trump administration evidently brought its almost bipolar competition with China to the Western Hemisphere. Nevertheless, although US alignment has become a must for the region’s widespread conservative forces, Washington has not stopped China’s advancement in Latin America. Tariffs and interventionism motivated Latin America to continue diversifying away from Washington, widening foreign policy portfolios to encompass the rest of the Global South. Two elements must be highlighted in the consequences of US-Latin America relations under Trump 2.0. First, Venezuela, the principal target of the current US foreign policy, is not the only country looking to Global South partners to counter Washington. Even Trump-loyal governments are building ties with Global South peers to reduce their dependence on an unpredictable White House. Secondly, China is currently an affirmed regional partner. Trump’s objective of expelling the Asian giant from Latin America, without providing a feasible alternative, can prove wrong. In other words, the Chinese presence in Latin America relates to its gargantuan infrastructure investments, as seen with the Chancay Port in Peru. Hence, threatening with tariffs, visa bans, and other sanctions without offering economic projects at Chinese rates does not in any way enhance the US image. Nonetheless, this analysis is not homogeneous across Latin America. Economies that are more dependent on the US and less aligned with Trump’s political ideology seem to reward Washington’s hawkish stance toward China. Mexico, tied to North America through the USMCA, increased import tariffs on One Year Trump | January 2026 GIES OCCASIONAL PAPER The Impact of the Second Trump Administration on Latin American Foreign Policy Page | 2 Chinese products, generating diplomatic tensions with Beijing in an attempt to appease the Trump administration amid disputes over fentanyl, migration, and the supposed Mexican backdoor for Asian goods to enter the US market (Dussel Peters, 2025). El Salvador and Honduras are similar examples. The Bukele government encountered appeasement from Trump due to its permission to deport Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison, which not only deleted any possible US criticism of its human rights violations, but also led to a bilateral economic agreement promising investments in the Central American nation. Regarding Honduras, a country where 26 % of the GDP depends on migrants’ remittances primarily from the US (IOM, 2024), Trump’s interference in the last controversial presidential elections showed again the vulnerability of countries economically dependent on Washington. In fact, by pardoning Juan Orlando Hernández, the former Honduran president convicted of drug trafficking in the US, Trump furthered the popularity of right-wing candidate Nasry Afura, who claimed to have won the presidency despite broad denunciation of fraud. However, some Latin American nations that have long depended on the US reacted differently to Trump’s foreign policy. The most spectacular cases are Lula’s Brazil and Petro’s Colombia.

Trump’s staunch appeasement of former president Jair Bolsonaro during the trial for his involvement in a coup attempt led to a major USBrazil crisis, enhanced by sanctions against Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes. Nevertheless, these actions expanded the traditional Brazilian sense of autonomy in foreign policy, historically aimed at leveraging Brazil’s regional power and its position in the Global South, while disregarding Washington’s impositions (Amorim, 2010). Brazil responded to Trump’s foreign policy by organizing the Rio de Janeiro BRICS summit, hosting COP30 in Belém, and expanding Mercosur’s scope toward SouthSouth partnerships, as seen in the incoming agreement with the UAE (Brazil-Arab News Agency, 2025). Regarding Colombia, it can be argued that Trump’s ostracism of Petro, with rivers of mutual accusations escalating until sanctions were imposed on Petro himself, completely transformed Colombian foreign policy. Past US-Colombia relations were strengthened around countering drug trafficking with significant degrees of interventionism by the White House in complicity with the Colombian government. In the 2000s, the Uribe administration completely distanced Colombia from the wave of progressive presidents that emerged in South America by enforcing the Respice Polum mantra, which called not only for prioritizing ties with the US but also for combating Colombia’s internal guerrillas under Washington’s diktat (Dallanegra Pedraza, 2012). Petro’s response to Trump’s claims of his involvement in cocaine exports was to lower diplomatic exchanges with the White House and also expand bounds with China. In fact, Petro advanced Colombia’s accession to the BRICScrafted New Development Bank. Colombia also broke diplomatic relations with Israel. It positioned itself against the War in Gaza, initiating a pivot to the Arab World that brought Qatar to be the mediator between the Colombian government and the Gaitanista paramilitary group (Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2025).

Undoubtedly, the core of Trump’s Latin American foreign policy is located in Venezuela. Since August 2025, threats of armed intervention and a sustained military buildup in the Caribbean Sea have undermined the longstanding status of Latin America as a Zone of Peace. On January 3rd, 2026, Operation Absolute Resolve ousted President Maduro from the Miraflores Palace, representing the first bombing to occur in a South American capital. Even if real consequences are yet to be seen, the impact on US-Latin America relations is already severe.