Former U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday defeated Vice President Kamala Harris to return to the White House.

Former President Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in Tuesday’s presidential election in the United States. The second person in U.S. history to be elected to nonconsecutive presidential terms, Trump is to return to the White House in January. Also in Tuesday’s elections, Trump’s Republican Party won control of the Senate for the first time in four years, though the House of Representatives remains too close to call. What does Trump’s return mean for Latin America and the Caribbean and for U.S. relations with the region? What are the most significant policies, in areas including migration and trade, that Trump will push when he returns to office? What will the makeup of Congress mean for U.S. policy toward Latin America?

John Feeley, former U.S. ambassador to Panama: “By now, Latin America and the rest of the world should have learned to take Donald Trump at his word. He rarely is deceptive, he is permanently transactional, and he usually telegraphs his punches. To that end, Trump 2.0 presages a new era of chaos and iconoclasm in the conduct of government-to-government relations. Big losers will include Mexico, which may see direct U.S. military incursions. Trump recently promised to apply 100 percent tariffs on our neighbor, regardless of the USMCA trade agreement. Likewise, other trade agreements, to include CAFTA-DR and the bilateral accords with Colombia, Chile and Panama, will predictably come under an ‘America First’ review. The region can expect unpredictable tariffs and cross-sectoral quid-pro-quo transactional proposals, blending migration, organized crime and trade concessions. Central Americans in particular, along with the ‘pet-eating’ Haitian and Venezuelan migrants, will be subject to MAGA base-baiting rhetoric about polluting America’s gene pool, while those countries struggle to accept massive deportations. El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele and Argentina’s Javier Milei will undoubtedly become the favored sons, likely garnering early prized invitations to the White House, perhaps with Elon Musk in tow. But in perhaps the cruelest twist, the biggest loser in the region will be the democratic Venezuelan opposition. Given Trump’s predilection for cutting deals with adversarial strongmen like Kim Jong Un, it is highly likely that, despite Edmundo González’s congratulatory tweet, Donald Trump will not reimpose oil sector sanctions on Maduro, but rather insist on some kind of performative exit controls from Venezuela, thus claiming he has solved the border crisis.”

Andrés Rozental, member of the Advisor board, president of Rozental & Asociados and former deputy foreign minister of Mexico: “Donald Trump’s election victory is bad news for most of Latin America, but especially for Mexico. Given Trump’s campaign emphasis on trade and immigration issues involving the region, as well as his apparent control of both houses of Congress and of the Supreme Court, the way is paved for him to implement many if not all of the threats he proffered during the last few months. Although experience has shown that Trump often uses rhetoric and intimidations as a negotiating tactic, rather than as policies to be implemented, this time around, his resounding win and knowing some of the individuals he is likely to name to his cabinet all portend a complicated and aggressive set of bilateral relationships between the United States and Latin America. Drugs, undocumented immigration flows, trade disputes, border security and a general disdain for many of the region’s governments will probably result in unhealthy interactions with most of the current left-leaning leaders in Latin America. If one believes in Trump’s threats to slap high tariffs on all imports into the United States from abroad and his promise to massively deport undocumented immigrants, together with measures to close the border with Mexico and resume building the wall that was never finished, Claudia Sheinbaum in particular will be faced with a hostile neighbor with whom she will have to deal for the next four years. She has neither the experience nor the bravado of her immediate predecessor, and that doesn’t bode well for Mexico-U.S. ties going forward.”

G. Philip Hughes, former director for Latin America at the National Security Council and senior vice president of the Council of American Ambassadors: “In his first term, Trump saw Latin America through the lenses of illegal immigration (with accompanying narcotics/fentanyl trafficking, crime and violence) and ‘unfair’ trade arrangements/competition ‘stealing’ American jobs. To this, he added a reversal of most of Obama’s liberalizations toward Cuba. And, for a time, Trump backed the ‘Guaidó gambit’ to delegitimize and leverage Venezuela’s Maduro out of power—but he seemed to lose interest when the effort proved to be difficult. Now, after four years of record illegal immigration across a wide-open U.S. southern border, we can expect more of the same—on steroids. Trump says that his first foreign leadership call will be to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum—threatening to wreck Mexico’s economy with escalating tariffs if she doesn’t stop the flows of illegal migration across the border. And he will resume his border wall construction. How his promise of ‘massive deportations’ of illegal immigrants will fare—or be implemented—is anybody’s guess, but President Trump always strives to keep his promises. I imagine that the general tone of the rest of Trump’s policies toward Latin America will be, ‘Ask not what the USA can do for you, but what you can do for the USA—to stay in our good graces.’ Trump may, again, further tighten the screws on Cuba since that regime now can’t even keep the lights on. He might again back efforts to leverage the Maduro regime out of power in Venezuela—a perceived competitor to Trump’s oil production plans—over its theft of last July’s presidential elections. And he’s likely to court cordial relations with any like-minded and friendly Latin American leaders. Otherwise, major visionary, ambitious, beneficent or altruistic U.S. initiatives toward the region will be in short supply.”

Cecilia Farfán-Méndez, researcher at the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at the University of California San Diego: “The outcome of the election will significantly affect security in the Western Hemisphere, including the U.S.-Mexico border. Contrary to narratives of a border invasion, the issue at stake for Latin America and the Caribbean is the homegrown gun violence that has traveled beyond the United States and has matured into an urgent regional crisis. Easy access to firearms has deeply transformed the leverage criminal groups have vis-à-vis the state. Measured in homicides, Latin America and the Caribbean is the most violent region in the world. Whereas the world’s average is 5.8 homicides per 100,000 people, the region has more than double the global average with 15 murders per 100,000. Notably, 67 percent of homicides are committed with a firearm. In the Caribbean, firearms are involved in almost 90 percent of homicides (nearly three times the worldwide figure). With a Trump administration, it is unlikely we’ll see this issue getting the attention and cooperation it deserves. To be sure, countries in the region are not blameless, but violence would not be the same without army-grade illicit firearms easily available for criminal actors in the region.”

Louis DeSipio, professor of political science and chair of Chicano/Latino studies at the University of California Irvine: “In his 2024 campaign, President Trump did not focus on many issues. Among the few that he did address regularly were two that will directly shape U.S. relations with Latin America. Most important among these was a commitment to deport significant numbers of immigrants residing in the United States. The specific numbers he discussed varied but grew to as many as 23 million in some of the rallies toward the end of the campaign. Many of these immigrants migrated from Latin America and the Caribbean. These numbers can be dismissed as campaign hyperbole, but they indicate a willingness on President Trump’s part to deport not only unauthorized immigrants, but also immigrants on temporary legal statuses, asylees and some legal permanent residents. The consequences of large-scale deportation, at whatever level, will not only be tragic for these migrants, but also for their countries and communities of origin that are ill-prepared to absorb return migrants. The power imbalance between the United States and the countries of origin limits their ability to block deportations. The United States will also lose the leverage that it has been building to establish third-party destinations to slow refugee migrations from Latin America to the United States. A second issue that President Trump routinely addressed in his campaign, tariffs, is one that, if implemented on the scale that he discussed, could work to the advantage some Latin American and Caribbean countries. New tariffs on China and other Asian countries could create incentives to shift manufacturing the Americas, areas that could maintain relatively lower tariffs under existing treaties.”

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