US President Donald Trump vowed to impose tariffs on Colombia, calling the South American country “a drug manufacturing machine.”
Talking to the press aboard the presidential airplane, Trump confirmed Republican Senator Lindsay Graham’s claim that the US Government would announce tariffs “today or tomorrow.”
The US president also confirmed that his government will suspend aid to Colombia, claiming “it has nothing to do with drug production.”
They are a drug manufacturing machine, Colombia, and we’re not gonna be part of it, so we’re gonna drop all the money we’re giving to them. It has nothing to do with them stopping drug production, and you look at the fields, the fields are loaded up with drugs and they refine the drugs and make tremendous amounts of cocaine and they send it all over the world and they destroy families. No, Colombia is out of control and now they have the worst president they’ve ever had. He’s a lunatic who’s got a lot of problems, mental problems.
US President Donald Trump
Colombian President Gustavo Petro seemed hardly impressed and said on social media platform X that Trump “allows me to put another perspective on the global anti-drug policy agenda.”
According to Petro, “cocaine is just an excuse to maintain the budget of a bloated federal bureaucracy and allows them military control of Latin American armies and other agencies.”
The US’ anti-drug policy, known as the war on drugs, is a failed strategy. It has left a million people dead in Latin America and is merely an excuse to control Latin America.
President Gustavo Petro
Trump’s announcement follows the president’s announcement that he would seek legal action against US officials responsible for allegedly assassinating a Colombian fisherman in the Caribbean Sea.
In response to the September 15 strike, the US claimed that the fisherman was a “Venezuelan narcoterrorist” and was killed while trafficking drugs to the North America, a claim denied by the victim’s family and Petro.
US assassinated fisherman in Colombian waters, family says
An end of US aid to Colombia would mainly affect the military and the police, who historically have been in charge with the forced eradication of coca, the base ingredient of cocaine.
Starting in 2017, the Colombian government has tried to move away from this notoriously ineffective strategy and has been experimenting with crop substitution instead.
The US Government has refused to support this strategy, which has been backed by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and local counternarcotics experts.
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