Trump Got What He Wanted With Colombia. But His Tactics Could Come Back To Bite Him.

For Donald Trump, the confrontations are the point.

In his first week back in the Oval Office, Trump has quickly torn up his predecessor’s alliance-driven foreign policy in favor of an even more rambunctious 2.0 version of “America First.” His provocations have raised tensions with key allies on multiple continents — and set up showdowns with other leaders that, at least politically, Trump will win regardless of how they respond. That was true of this weekend’s skirmish with Colombia, in which tensions over the return of migrants nearly sparked a trade war.

But it could backfire in the long run, further destabilizing an already tenuous global order and even pushing would-be partner countries closer to Beijing.

“People in Latin America are extremely worried,” said Jorge Heine, the former Chilean ambassador to China. For South America “the message is that it’s not a good idea to be very closely interlinked with the United States, because you might pay a heavy price,” continued Heine, who is now a professor at Boston University. “And as a result of that, China’s prospects for stronger ties have been enhanced.”

As tensions between Washington and Bogota simmered Sunday afternoon, China’s ambassador to Colombia posted an overture to China on X, reminding followers that Colombia’s foreign minister visited Beijing last year and described the bilateral relationship as the “best moment” in 45 years.

Colombia is hardly the only country reeling from Trump’s confrontational style. Of greater concern to allies, he’s continued to express his determination to wrest control of Greenland from the Danes, to “take back” the Panama Canal from Panama, to impose major tariffs on Mexico, Canada and Europe and to continue suggesting Canada’s simplest way to avoid tariffs is to become America’s 51st state.

Given the economic and military superiority of the United States, Trump almost always has the upper hand as he applies pressure on leaders of Canada, Denmark and now Colombia, all steadfast allies with a history of working closely with Washington. But after four years in which former President Joe Biden prioritized multilateral coordination with key allies, Trump’s aggressive moves, all carried out with characteristic bluster on social media, have come as a shock even to leaders who felt more ready for a second term than they did his first.

“Before he was inaugurated, the thought in Europe was basically: ‘We got this, we can deal with this,’” said Liana Fix, a Europe fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who’s in frequent contact with EU officials. “People thought with the right approach — conceding on defense spending and paying more, taking him seriously and not literally and not responding to everything he says, lots of flattery — Europe could manage and preserve the relationship. And now, after just one week, people are quite rattled again. No one is sure how radical this is going to be.”

Over the weekend, the U.S. and Colombia almost went from zero to an all-out trade war after Colombian President Gustavo Petro refused to allow two military aircraft carrying handcuffed undocumented Colombian migrants to land, prompting Trump to threaten an emergency 25 percent tariff on all Colombian goods. Tensions ratcheted down Sunday evening after hours of direct negotiations that, had they occurred earlier, might have prevented the spat.

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who posted Sunday night on X that Trump was standing down on his tariff threat because Colombia “agreed to all of President Trump’s terms,” had days earlier posted an image of undocumented migrants in handcuffs being led onto a military plane with a simple caption: “deportation flights have begun.”

It may have been that imagery, meant to show Trump’s base and the American public that Trump was following through with his promised immigration crackdown, that led Petro to bar the flights from landing after previously allowing hundreds of repatriation flights from the U.S. on civilian aircraft. “We are not anyone’s colony,” Petro said Sunday, calling for the “dignified return of nationals.”

But Leavitt’s tweets underscored how much Trump’s nascent foreign policy appears geared, first and foremost, toward a domestic audience. As the tariff threat hung in the balance, several administration officials and pro-Trump activists posted in support of the approach, some making clear their indifference to any economic impact and the likelihood of higher prices for Americans on Colombian imports.

“CHARGE ME MORE FOR FLOWERS & COFFEE. Thank you,” wrote Katie Miller, a spokesperson for the new Department of Governmental Efficiency and the wife of deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller.

The imbroglio was sparked by the overlapping of Trump’s top two policy priorities — trade and immigration — with immigration at the top of the list. The administration also stopped processing visas for Colombians on Sunday and enhanced Customs and Border inspections of flights, private aircraft and cargo to and from Colombia, measures that will remain in place until the first plane of Colombian migrants is returned to the country.

Both the first Trump and Obama administrations used visa restrictions to pressure countries to accept deportation flights, and Trump’s new team will likely use the weeks ahead to determine whether to issue additional sanctions on other countries deemed problematic. Border czar Tom Homan said on Monday that the administration is also working on agreements with third-party countries that allow them to accept and process asylum seekers that the U.S. deports.

“First of all, we’ve got President Trump. They will take them back, I’m convinced,” Homan said on Fox News, when asked how they’ll handle countries that won’t accept deportation flights. “I’ve already got several countries lining up, willing to take nationals from any country for us. … If we can’t move them one place, we’ll put them somewhere else.”

Trump on Sunday also threatened a travel ban. He laid the groundwork for that last week by directing agencies to identify countries where vetting visitors and visa applicants is considered unfeasible — the makings of a second travel ban for countries said to pose a threat to national security.

“The Trump administration has already decided both how it will exert pressure, cutting through the Gordian policy and legal knots — and how fast it will do so.” said Stephen McFarland, a former ambassador to Guatemala, in a long post on X.

The president’s hair-trigger response to Petro also showed how willing — or even eager — he is to quickly escalate disagreements with other countries into tariff threats.

Following through would test the bounds of presidential authority using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, which gives the president sweeping authority to control international economic transactions after declaring an emergency.

No president has ever actually used it to impose tariffs, but Trump has now threatened to at least twice — once against Mexico during his first term and now against Colombia. In both cases, he struck a deal with the targeted country that led to him to withdraw the threat, leaving the question unsettled as to whether it would survive a legal challenge.

But how effective Trump’s tariffs can be “really depends on the partner and the context,” said Kathleen Claussen, a former U.S. trade official who is now a professor of law at Georgetown University. She drew a distinction between Trump’s threat against Colombia, which was in response to a fast-developing situation, and his threat to impose a 25 percent tariff on Canada and Mexico on Feb. 1 to pressure those countries to do more to stop illegal immigration into the United States, as well as cross-border fentanyl shipments.

Canada and Mexico shipped about $900 billion worth of goods to the U.S. last year, or roughly one-third of total U.S. imports, compared with Colombia, which exported $18 billion worth of goods.

“He went after a state that he knows he could push a little bit,” said Inu Manak, a trade policy fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “So it’s sort of a setting example with a weaker target, and then claim victory really quickly to show how tough he can be as a negotiator. But I wouldn’t imagine Canada and Mexico are going to fold that fast.”

The United States spent decades nurturing the trade relationship with Colombia as part of its efforts to bring peace and stability to a country ravaged by violence and the international drug trade. It negotiated a free trade agreement that built on earlier U.S. efforts to help foster jobs in legitimate trade areas such as cut flowers and coffee production.

But what Trump did “with Colombia is a prime example of how the United States is going to lose ground further in Latin America to Chinese influence there,” Manuk said. “Because it’s a great way for China to say, ‘Hey, you want financing. You want all these things? We’ll help you out. Like, you can’t trust the United States.’”

Robbie Gramer and Jack Detsch contributed to this report.