On Sunday, President Donald Trump issued a host of measures including limited sanctions and tariffs against Colombia after the country turned away two military planes carrying Colombian deportees. In response, the country’s left-wing President Gustavo Petro issued retaliatory tariffs on US imports, claiming that he “did not fear Trump’s blockade.” Within hours, the White House issued a statement that Colombia had submitted to all of the administration’s demands and would continue receiving flights of deportees. For its part, the Colombian government countered that it would continue to defend the dignity of its citizens, with both countries forgoing tariffs.
Last year, Colombia repatriated around 14,000 migrants deported by the Biden administration. Some of them, according to the Colombian daily El Tiempo, arrived handcuffed at the ankles. Like Trump, Petro is an impulsive and unpredictable populist, prone to late-night bouts of self-aggrandizement on X (hence the label on his account of “social media influencer”), and his decision to block the two planes seems to have been a last-minute impulse. According to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Colombia had initially agreed to receive the deportation flights and then denied the planes entry while they were still in mid-flight. In Petro’s telling, Colombia would not stand to see its citizens “treated like criminals” by being handcuffed and flown in military planes. Whether or not the deportees in question committed crimes other than entering the country illegally remains unclear, but it seems that Rubio’s story largely checks out.
Colombian internal politics likely played more of a role in this affair than most US commentators realize. Reckless as it may seem, it’s possible that the unpopular Petro sensed an opportunity to distract from an ongoing border conflict fueled by Venezuela-aligned rebels. Here it’s also worth noting that Colombia’s governing party is a nationalistic movement that takes every opportunity to paint its domestic opponents as in league with foreign—especially US—interests. In the midst of the spat with Washington, members of Colombia’s gentry opposition, such as Medellín Mayor Federico Gutierrez, prostrated themselves before Trump, much to Petro’s glee.
The Colombian president would go on to offer the presidential plane for repatriation flights and revel in the international solidarity he received. It’s the kind of confrontation that might seem reassuringly familiar to Rubio’s former constituents in South Florida, who remain trapped in a Cold War time warp in which virtuous capitalists battle against sinister socialists. However, in the much more consequential reality of the emerging cold war between the United States and China, yesterday’s affair offers cause for concern.
American imports to Colombia are much diminished from the high point of unipolarity. In 2025, trade with the United States comprises just 25 percent of Colombia’s imports and 30 percent of its exports, with China accounting for similar shares, which is still comparatively low by Latin American standards. For comparison, the United States accounted for 50 percent of Colombia’s exports and 36 percent of its imports in 2000. It was no surprise, then, that China’s ambassador to Colombia seized on the opportunity to announce a willingness to import more Colombian goods should the country face prolonged American tariffs.
“Trump’s belligerent posture might backfire.”
This isn’t the only case in which Trump’s belligerent posture might backfire. His threats to reassert US control over the Panama Canal, ostensibly aimed at thwarting Chinese influence, may instead prompt Panama to strengthen ties with China. Such a development would be all the more striking given that Panama’s President José Raul Mulino was an enthusiastic Trump supporter (who, as it happens, lambasted his Colombian counterpart, Petro for failing to deter migration through the country’s shared border in the Darien Gap).
For the moment, and to Trump’s credit, his tariff threats have proven an effective means of cajoling foreign leaders, and they have yet to backfire economically by raising costs for American consumers. But Trump will need to avoid pushing US trading partners into the arms of its chief geopolitical rival.