With President Donald Trump rescinding aid and threatening punitive tariffs, Colombia recalled its ambassador to the US on Monday as the leaders of the two countries engaged in a public spat.
Trump criticized his socialist opponent Gustavo Petro as a “illegal drug leader” on Sunday and pledged to cut off all help to the South American country, which has historically been a strong US ally and is the world’s largest producer of cocaine.
Additionally, he vowed to “close up” drug cultivation in Colombia if Petro did not take action, and he warned he will announce fresh tariffs targeting the country on Monday.
Colombia’s foreign ministry announced Monday that Ambassador Daniel Garcia Pena had returned from Washington to Bogota for consultation, while Interior Minister Armando Benedetti called Trump’s remarks on forcibly ending drug cultivation a “threat of invasion or military action against Colombia.”
Petro and Trump have feuded since the US leader returned to power in January, but their public conflict has intensified in recent weeks over the Republican president’s deadly anti-drug campaign in the Caribbean.
Since August, Washington has stationed warships off the coast of South America and launched attacks on at least seven vessels it claimed were transporting drugs that would eventually reach the United States.
Trump’s administration says at least 32 people have been killed so far, but it hasn’t provided any evidence to support its allegations.
According to experts, even when these summary killings target known drug traffickers, they are still unlawful.
Although Colombia has recently come into focus, the strategy has mostly targeted drug trafficking from Venezuela.
On Sunday, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said three people had been killed on an alleged drug-running vessel affiliated with a Colombian armed group, the National Liberation Army (ELN).
That strike came on the heels of another attack — on a semi-submersible vessel — that left two survivors, one of whom was Colombian.
Petro has accused Trump of murder and of violating Colombia’s sovereignty.
In an interview Monday night with Univision, Petro said he trusted other US democratic institutions to “put science and truth above slander, arrogance and greed.”
Trump, he said, “does not like free men because he wants to be king.”
Until now, Colombia has received more US aid than any other country in South America — $740 million in 2023, according to US government figures. Half of this went to fighting drug trafficking.
Relations between two historic allies are at their lowest point in decades.
Last month, Washington announced it had decertified Colombia as an ally in the fight against drugs. Colombia hit back by halting arms purchases from the United States, its biggest military partner.
In late September, the United States revoked Petro’s US visa after he gave a speech at a pro-Palestinian street rally in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
Since coming to power in 2022, leftist Petro has championed a paradigm shift in the US-led war on drugs, away from forced eradication to focus on the social problems that fuel drug trafficking.
Under his watch, cultivation of coca, the raw material of cocaine, has increased by about 70 percent, according to the Colombian government and United Nations estimates.
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