Donald Trump and Latin America

Abstract

Beyond the rhetoric and the very deep contradictions that seem to characterize the Trump administration, events seem to suggest that US continental politics will be characterized by the attempt to abandon or, at least, supersede some of the pillars of US foreign policy in Latin America since the post-Cold War. Security threats remain essentially the same, as is the tendency to establish privileged relationships with key partners in the region. What seems to have changed is trust in multilateral institutions and agreements, in the promotion of democracy, and, more generally, in that combination of hard and soft power which, since the end of the 1980s, was considered by US policy makers as the main way to preserve the ‘liberal hegemony’. These things have been abandoned in favor not of a withdrawal from the continental scenario, but of a definitively unilateral and aggressive approach. It is difficult to predict what the effects of all this will be on the Latin American countries. The Trump administration’s choices could even open paths unthinkable until now.