Donald Trump claimed an early victory for a coercive foreign policy based on tariffs and hard power on Sunday after announcing Colombia had backed down in a dispute over migrant repatriation flights.
The president had earlier unveiled swift and painful punishment, including huge tariffs, on the US ally in his most overt attempt yet to make an example of a nation that crossed him and to assert dominance in the Western Hemisphere.
The crisis erupted when Colombian President Gustavo Petro blocked US military flights carrying undocumented migrants from landing, in a hitch for the mass deportation operation meant to honor one of Trump’s most high-profile campaign promises.
The US president jumped at a chance to show his supporters how tough he can be and to demonstrate to other countries in Latin America the price of resisting migrant repatriations.
After hours of tensions with Bogota, the White House said Colombia had agreed to accept migrant flights, including on military aircraft, and that tariffs would be held off pending its implementation of the deal.
“Today’s events make clear to the world that America is respected again,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement late Sunday. “President Trump will continue to fiercely protect our nation’s sovereignty, and he expects all other nations of the world to fully cooperate in accepting the deportation of their citizens illegally present in the United States.”
Colombia’s foreign minister soon confirmed that US deportation flights had resumed. Petro’s reversal represents a concession to US power and to Trump’s aggressive personal style. It is also likely to embolden administration officials who see tariff threats not simply as a traditional device in trade disputes but as a tool to intimidate other nations, including longtime US allies, across a broader set of issues.
Still, the spat with Colombia was also a reminder of how Trump’s hardline approach will cause massive global disruption. The US president has already browbeaten Canada and Mexico over border issues, sought to force Denmark to sell Greenland, and threatened to take back the Panama Canal.
Four years of such tactics could harm US global relationships and harden attitudes to Americans among foreign populations. The Colombia dispute quickly got the attention of China, which is seeking to increase its influence in Washington’s backyard — underscoring the potential downside for the United States if Trump chooses incessant confrontation that alienates key regional nations.
Trump is wielding power all over the map
Trump’s victory over Colombia capped the first week of his presidency, during which he used intimidation as a device to stamp his power on the United States at home and to sharply change the nation’s path abroad.
On Sunday, for instance, Trump’s new administration launched a deportation blitz in Chicago that will spread countrywide in the latest highly visible sign of his desire to quickly get results.
White House border czar Tom Homan told CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez Sunday that the new multiagency approach on immigration enforcement was a “game-changer.”
Today’s operation was all of government. President Trump has put all of government on this issue,” he said. Nearly 1,000 people were arrested in the sweep Sunday, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
This followed another stunning example of the new president wielding aggressive executive authority after he fired more than a dozen watchdog officials in key government agencies Friday night.
The purge is part of Trump’s attempts to remake the federal government in line with a long-held conservative belief that the federal bureaucracy always frustrates Republican presidents as they try to implement electoral mandates.
But since the agency inspectors general report waste, fraud and abuse to Congress, the move is being criticized by Democrats as an abuse of power and a sign of Trump’s cavalier regard for government ethics. And even some top Republicans complained the president should have complied with the law by giving Congress 30 days’ notice of the dismissals.
“I think he should have done that,” Sen. Lindsey Graham said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
But the South Carolina Republican asked: “Is it OK for him to put people in place that he thinks can carry out his agenda? Yes. He won the election. What do you expect him to do, just leave everybody in place in Washington before he got elected?” Graham added: “He feels like the government hasn’t worked very well for the American people.”
Source:CNN