Ben Norton

Donald Trump has kicked off his second administration with a very aggressive foreign policy.

Trump is threatening trade restrictions and sanctions on countries around the world, including 100% tariffs on BRICS countries, which now represent 55% of the world population.

The US president wants to colonize Greenland.  He also vowed to take over the Panama Canal.

Invoking “Manifest Destiny”, Trump is even attacking Canada and Mexico, the two largest trading partners of the United States.

When Trump selected neoconservative hawk Marco Rubio as his secretary of state, it was a sign that he would be focusing his attention on Latin America, seeking to impose US hegemony in the region — and in particular to prevent China from having close relations with Latin America.

Trump and Marco Rubio revive the colonialist Monroe Doctrine

During Trump’s first administration, Rubio called for the US military to invade Venezuela, to overthrow the government of President Nicolás Maduro.

Rubio likewise wants to impose even heavier sanctions on Cuba, Nicaragua, and other independent leftist governments in Latin America.

In the first week that Trump returned to the White House, one of the nations that he targeted was Colombia.

Historically, Colombia had been one of the closest US allies in the region. Venezuela’s revolutionary President Hugo Chávez famously dubbed Colombia “the Israel of Latin America”. He argued that, just as Israel serves as an extension of US hegemony in West Asia, acting as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” for the US empire, Colombia plays the same role in Latin America, as a base of operations that Washington has used to try to destabilize other countries in the region. 

Colombia’s right-wing, pro-US President Juan Manuel Santos said he was proud that his country was called “the Israel of Latin America”.  [Colombia's upper class is notorious for its disgusting comprador history, its pretentiousness, and viciousness in the suppression of workers and peasants organisations.—Ed.]

However, the geopolitical situation changed quite dramatically in 2022, when the people of Colombia elected their first-ever left-wing president, Gustavo Petro.

Ever since he came to office, the US government has meddled in Colombia’s internal affairs and sought to destabilize him.

Marco Rubio has waged a kind of political war against Petro, fixating on his past as a guerrilla in a revolutionary leftist organization, claiming that he “has put Colombia’s security and stability at risk”.

Rubio has aggressively aimed to cut off Latin America’s relations with China, which has become the largest trading partner of South America, and the number one trading partner of Latin America as a whole, excluding Mexico.

In 2023, Petro visited Beijing, where Colombia and China elevated their relations to the level of a “strategic partnership”. Rubio wrote in outrage on Twitter that “Petro’s new ‘Strategic Partnership’ with the Chinese Communist Party will leave Colombia hostage to their authoritarian grip”.

Rubio was especially furious when Colombia cut off its diplomatic relations with Israel, with Petro comparing Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler and accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.

Angrily denouncing “President Petro’s anti-Israel rhetoric and shameful stance”, Rubio claimed, “As a far-left Marxist, Petro continues to serve as a spokesperson for criminal thugs, who are viciously killing innocent Israelis”.

The Trump administration has revived the colonialist Monroe Doctrine, essentially claiming that Latin America is the imperial “backyard” of the United States. Washington wants to prevent the region from having an independent foreign policy.

Trump threatens Colombia with sanctions and tariffs

On 26 January, Trump announced that he would impose sanctions on Colombia, along with initial tariffs of 25%, which would increase to 50% in the following week.

Trump wrote that he would levy “Visa Sanctions on all Party Members, Family Members, and Supporters of the Colombian Government”.

This attack came after Petro condemned the Trump administration for brutalizing immigrants and deporting them to Latin America on military planes in inhumane conditions, with handcuffs on their hands and feet.

“We have never refused to accept migrants and we have tried to stop migration”, Petro explained. “The stupid [US] blockade of Venezuela was what unleashed millions of migrants into the US”.

“But do not demand that I accept deportees from the US, handcuffed and on military aircraft”, the Colombian president added. “We are not a colony of anyone”.

Petro responded to Trump’s 25% tariffs on Colombian goods by announcing that Colombia would retaliate with 25% tariffs on US goods.

“US products whose price will rise in the national economy should be replaced by national production”, he said, adding that “the government will help in this goal”.

Right-wing politicians in Colombia, like former presidential candidate Fico Gutiérrez, denounced Petro and obsequiously expressed support for Trump and the United States.

“It doesn’t surprise me that they kneel [before the US]”, Petro shot back at Gutiérrez.

Petro declared, “Let’s fight so that poor families in Antioquia do not offer their young daughters to the gringos. It is a matter of national and personal dignity”.

Meanwhile, as the US government was attacking Colombia, China’s ambassador to the South American nation, Zhu Jingyang, emphasized that Beijing supported it and defended its sovereignty.

“We are at the best moment of our diplomatic relations between China and Colombia, which are turning 45 years old”, said Ambassador Zhu.

Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro with China’s President Xi Jinping in October 2023

Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s open letter to Donald Trump

In response to Donald Trump’s threats, Colombian President Gustavo Petro published a scathing yet poetic open letter on Twitter. The following is an English language translation produced by Geopolitical Economy Report:

Trump, I don’t really like traveling to the US, it’s a bit boring, but I confess that there are some things that are worth it. I like going to the Black neighborhoods of Washington. There I saw an entire fight in the US capital between Blacks and Latinos with barricades, which seemed like nonsense to me, because they should unite.

I confess that I like Walt Whitman, and Paul Simon, and Noam Chomsky, and Miller.

I confess that Sacco and Vanzetti, who have my blood, in the history of the US, they are memorable and I follow them. They were murdered, for being labor leaders, with the electric chair, by the fascists who are in the US, as well as in my country.

I don’t like Trump’s oil; he is going to end the human species because of greed. Maybe one day, over a drink of whiskey that I accept, despite my gastritis, we can talk frankly about this, but it’s difficult because you consider me an inferior race, and I am not, nor is any Colombian.

So if you know someone who is stubborn, that’s me, period. You can use your economic strength and your arrogance to try to carry out a coup d’etat, like they did with [Salvador] Allende. But I die on my own terms; I resisted torture and I resist you.

I don’t want slave-owners on the side of Colombia; we already had many and we freed ourselves. What I want on the side of Colombia are lovers of freedom. If you can’t accompany me, I’ll go elsewhere.

Colombia is the heart of the world, and you have not understood it. This is the land of the yellow butterflies, of the beauty of Remedios, but also of the Colonels Aureliano Buendía [a revolutionary leader in the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude], of whom I am one, perhaps the last.

You will kill me, but I will survive in my people, which came before yours, in the Americas. We are peoples of the winds, of the mountains, of the Caribbean Sea, and of freedom.

You don’t like our freedom, fine. I don’t shake hands with white slave-owners. I shake the hands of the white freedom-loving heirs of [Abraham] Lincoln, and of the black and white peasants of the USA, before whose graves I cried and prayed on a battlefield, which I reached, after walking the mountains of Italian Tuscany and after being saved from Covid. They are the United States, and before them I kneel, before no one else.

Overthrow me, President [Trump], and the Americas and humanity will respond.

Colombia now stops looking to the north; it looks to the world. Our blood comes from the blood of the Caliphate of Córdoba, the civilization at that time; of the Roman Latins of the Mediterranean, the civilization of that time, who founded the republic; the democracy in Athens. Our blood has the Black rebels who were turned into slaves by you.

Colombia is the first free territory of America, before Washington, of all America. There I take shelter in its African songs. My land is made of goldsmiths from the time of the Egyptian pharaohs, and of some of the earliest artists in the world, in Chiribiquete.

You will never dominate us. You are opposed by the warrior who rode our lands, shouting freedom, who is named [Simón] Bolívar.

Our people are a bit fearful, a bit timid, they are naive and kind, loving; but they will know how to keep the Panama Canal, which you took from us with violence. Two hundred heroes from all across Latin America lie in Bocas del Toro, now Panama, formerly Colombia, whom you murdered.

I raise a flag and as [Jorge Eliécer] Gaitán said, even if I am alone, it will remain hoisted with the Latin American dignity that is the dignity of America, which your great-grandfather did not know, and mine did; you, Mr. President, who is an immigrant in the United States.

Your blockade does not scare me; because Colombia, in addition to being the country of beauty, is the heart of the world. I know that you love beauty as I do; do not disrespect it and it will give you some of its sweetness.

COLOMBIA FROM TODAY ON OPENS ITSELF TO THE WHOLE WORLD, WITH OPEN ARMS; WE ARE THE BUILDERS OF FREEDOM, LIFE, AND HUMANITY.

I am informed that you are putting a 50% tariff on the fruits of our human labor that enter the US. I am doing the same.

Let our people plant corn that was discovered in Colombia and feed the world.