President Donald Trump speaks with Secretary of State Marco Rubio throughout a roundtable dialogue on school sports activities within the East Room of the White Home, Friday, March 6, 2026, in Washington.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
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Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
DORAL, Fla. — President Donald Trump is about to collect with Latin American leaders on Saturday at his Miami-area golf membership as his administration seems to show it is nonetheless dedicated to sharpening U.S. international coverage concentrate on the Western Hemisphere even because it offers with five-alarm crises across the globe.
The gathering, dubbed the “Shield of the Americas” summit, comes simply two months after Trump ordered an audacious U.S. army operation to seize Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and whisk him and his spouse to the U.S. to face drug conspiracy prices.
Looming even bigger is Trump’s choice to hitch with Israel to launch a struggle on Iran one week in the past, a battle that is already left a whole lot useless, convulsed international markets and unsettled the broader Center East.
Trump’s time with the Latin American leaders might be restricted: He’s additionally set to fly to Dover Air Drive Base, Delaware, to be available for the dignified switch of the six U.S. troops killed in a drone strike on a command heart in Kuwait, at some point after the U.S. and Israel launched their army marketing campaign towards Iran.
However with the summit, Trump will look to show consideration to the Western Hemisphere, at the least for a second. He is vowed to reassert U.S. dominance within the area and push again on what he sees as years of Chinese language financial encroachment in America’s yard.
“Under previous leaders, we grew obsessed with every other theater and every other border in the world except our own,” Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth advised regional leaders and protection ministers who gathered in Florida this week for talks on countering drug cartels. “These elites reduced our power and presence in this hemisphere, opting for a benign neglect that was anything but benign.”
Who might be attending
The leaders of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, and Trinidad and Tobago have confirmed they’re going to participate within the gathering on the president’s Trump Nationwide Doral Miami, a golf resort the place he is additionally set to host the Group of 20 summit later this 12 months.
The concept for a summit of like-minded conservatives from throughout the hemisphere emerged from the ashes of what was to be the tenth version of the Summit of the Americas, which was scrapped in the course of the U.S. army buildup off the coast of Venezuela final 12 months.
Host Dominican Republic, pressured by the White Home, had barred Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela from attending the regional gathering. However after leftist leaders in Colombia and Mexico threatened to tug out in protest — and with no dedication from Trump to attend — the Dominican Republic’s President Luis Abinader determined on the final minute to postpone the occasion, citing “deep differences” within the area.
The Defend of the Americas moniker is supposed to talk to Trump’s imaginative and prescient for a “America First” international coverage towards the area that leverages U.S. army and intelligence belongings unseen within the area for the reason that finish of the Chilly Conflict.
However notably lacking would be the area’s two dominant powers — Brazil and Mexico — in addition to Colombia, lengthy the linchpin of U.S. anti-narcotics technique within the area.
Richard Feinberg, who helped plan the primary Summit of Americas in 1994 whereas working on the Nationwide Safety Council within the Clinton White Home, stated the distinction could not be starker.
“The first Summit of the Americas, with 34 nations and a carefully negotiated comprehensive agenda for regional competitiveness, projected inclusion, consensus and optimism,” stated Feinberg, now professor emeritus on the College of California-San Diego. “The hastily convened Shield of the Americas mini-summit conjures a crouched defensiveness, with only a dozen or so attendees huddled around a single dominant figure.”
The problem from China
Since returning to the White Home, Trump has made countering Chinese language affect within the hemisphere a prime precedence. His nationwide safety technique touts what it dubs the “Trump Corollary” to the nineteenth century Monroe Doctrine — which had sought to ban European incursions within the Americas — by concentrating on Chinese language infrastructure initiatives, army cooperation and funding within the area’s useful resource industries.
The primary demonstration of the extra muscular strategy was Trump’s strong-arming of Panama to withdraw from China’s Belt and Highway Initiative and overview long-term port contracts held by a Hong Kong-based agency amid U.S. threats to retake the Panama Canal.
Extra not too long ago, the U.S. seize of Maduro and Trump’s pledge to “run” Venezuela threatens to disrupt oil shipments to China — the largest purchaser of Venezuelan crude earlier than the raid — and convey into Washington’s orbit one among Beijing’s closest allies within the area. Trump is scheduled to journey to Beijing later this month to satisfy with Chinese language President Xi Jinping.
However even leaders carefully aligned with Trump have been reluctant to sever ties with China, stated Evan Ellis, an skilled on Chinese language engagement within the area on the Middle for Strategic and Worldwide Research.
For a lot of nations, China’s trade-focused diplomacy fills a crucial monetary void in a area with main improvement challenges starting from poverty discount to infrastructure bottlenecks. In distinction, Trump has been slashing international help to the area whereas rewarding nations lined up behind his crackdown on immigration — a coverage that is extensively unpopular throughout the hemisphere.
“The U.S. is offering the region tariffs, deportations and militarization whereas China is offering trade and investment,” stated Kevin Gallagher, director of Boston College’s International Growth Coverage Middle, who has written extensively about China’s financial diplomacy within the Americas. “Leaders in the region would do well to remain neutral and hedge, such that they can leverage increased U.S.-China rivalry to their own benefit.”
Forward of the summit, Trump introduced that he was naming Kristi Noem, whom he simply eliminated as Division of Homeland Safety secretary, as his particular envoy for the Defend of the Americas.
Noem stated Trump will announce “a big agreement” on the summit centered on “how we’re going to go after cartels and drug trafficking in the entire Western Hemisphere.”
