America Division of the Treasury has slapped sanctions on Colombian President Gustavo Petro, his household and the South American nation’s inside minister, Armando Benedetti.
Friday’s determination marks a major escalation within the ongoing feud between the left-wing Petro and his US counterpart, the right-wing Donald Trump.
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In a assertion, the US Treasury accused Petro of failing to rein in Colombia’s cocaine business and of defending felony teams from accountability.
The Treasury cited Petro’s “Complete Peace” plan, an initiative designed to carry Colombia’s six-decade-long inner battle to an finish by way of negotiations with armed rebels and felony organisations.
“Since President Gustavo Petro got here to energy, cocaine manufacturing in Colombia has exploded to the best fee in many years, flooding the USA and poisoning People,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent mentioned in an announcement.
“President Petro has allowed drug cartels to flourish and refused to cease this exercise.”
Petro, a prolific social media consumer, shortly shot again that the Treasury’s determination was the fruits of longstanding Republican threats, together with from US Senator Bernie Moreno, a critic of his presidency.
“Bernie Moreno’s menace has certainly been fulfilled,” Petro wrote on the social media platform X. “My spouse, my youngsters, and I’ve been positioned on the OFAC [Office of Foreign Assets Control] listing.”
He argued that his nation had been “preventing drug trafficking successfully for many years” and advised he would contest the sanctions within the US court docket system.
“Not one step again and by no means on my knees,” Petro wrote, pledging to not again down from the struggle.
Friday’s designation places Petro in a comparatively small group of high worldwide leaders to be sanctioned by the US.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has confronted particular person sanctions for human rights abuses in his nation, and Russian President Vladimir Putin was additionally hit with sanctions following his nation’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The sanctions in opposition to Petro, nevertheless, come because the left-wing chief and former insurgent reaches the twilight of his presidency. Time period-limited, he’s slated to step down in 2026.
Petro is taken into account the primary left-wing president in trendy Colombian historical past.
It additionally marks the most recent motion the Trump administration has taken in opposition to certainly one of its most outstanding critics in Latin America.
A historical past of confrontation
The feud between Petro and Trump started shortly after the US president returned to the White Home for a second time period on January 20.
Rapidly, Trump moved to fulfil a marketing campaign promise: the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants from the US.
Photographs of shackled immigrants being herded onto US navy aeroplanes stuffed the worldwide media. Petro was amongst those that expressed outrage on social media.
Within the wee hours of January 26, he threatened to not settle for two deportation flights that had been in midair from the US. “The US can not deal with Colombian migrants as criminals,” he wrote on social media.
Trump responded by threatening the nation with 30 % tariffs, and Petro backed down.
However the two have continued to butt heads over points starting from immigration to human rights to how Colombia ought to tamp down on its illicit cocaine manufacturing.
The South American nation stays the world’s largest supply of coca, a leaf that may be processed into cocaine. Final yr, the United Nations reported that Colombia had marked its tenth consecutive yr of accelerating cocaine manufacturing, with a 53 % improve over 2022, when Petro took workplace.
Trump, nevertheless, has more and more leaned into the struggle in opposition to drug trafficking as he flexes his may overseas, significantly in Latin America.
He has, for instance, wielded the specter of elevated tariffs on US imports to stress different nations, together with neighbours like Canada and Mexico, to fight drug smuggling.
Clashes over navy strikes
Since September 2, Trump has adopted his threats with navy motion, finishing up a collection of missile strikes on nautical vessels within the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean.
The targets, Trump has mentioned, had been drug traffickers. However Petro has argued that the strikes quantity to extrajudicial killings.
He has used his social media platform to spotlight instances like that of fisherman Alejandro Carranza, who reportedly died in one of many strikes. A minimum of 34 folks have been killed within the bombings, their identities by no means formally confirmed.
“These are usually not warfare casualties,” Petro wrote in one social media submit on Friday, shortly earlier than the sanctions had been introduced. “They’re murders.”
Petro took that message to the stage on the United Nations in New York in September, blasting the Trump administration for its actions.
“The violent warfare on medication was a failure, and I changed it with an efficient anti-trafficking coverage,” Petro advised the worldwide physique.
“Was it actually essential to shoot missiles on unarmed poor younger folks within the Caribbean? The anti-drug coverage is supposed to cease cocaine that’s coming to the USA. The anti-drug coverage is to dominate the peoples of the south as a complete.”
Petro was seen afterwards on the streets of New York Metropolis protesting with pro-Palestinian demonstrators in opposition to Israel’s warfare on Gaza.
Inside hours, the Trump administration, which has in contrast such protests to “terrorism”, yanked Petro’s visa “as a consequence of his reckless and incendiary actions”.
That very same month, the administration additionally decertified Colombia as a accomplice within the US’s persevering with “warfare on medication”.
Ending Colombia’s support
Relations between Trump and Petro have solely grown extra tense since.
Simply this week, Trump introduced on his platform Fact Social that he can be ending all support to Colombia, the most important recipient of US funds in South America.
He additionally warned the US might take a extra energetic position within the area if Petro doesn’t do extra to stem the cocaine commerce.
“Petro, a low rated and really unpopular chief, with a recent mouth towards America, higher shut up these killing fields instantly, or the USA will shut them up for him, and it gained’t be carried out properly,” Trump wrote.
It was a menace Trump would repeat days later, on October 22, in a gathering with NATO Secretary-Common Mark Rutte.
“He’d higher watch it, or we’ll take very critical motion in opposition to him and his nation,” Trump mentioned of Petro. “What he has led his nation into is a loss of life entice.”
Petro, in response, threatened to sue Trump for slander. The US chief has known as Petro a “drug seller”, “thug”, and “unhealthy man”, amongst different issues.
The spat between the 2 presidents has left their nations’ diplomatic relations frayed, with Colombia not too long ago recalling its ambassador from Washington, DC.
However historically, Colombia had been one of many US’s high allies within the area and a key accomplice in its efforts to stem the drug commerce.
