For months, United States President Donald Trump has known as him a “sick man” and an “unlawful drug chief”.
However on Tuesday, Trump welcomed his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro, to the White Home for his or her first face-to-face assembly in Washington, DC.
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Each leaders hailed the assembly as productive, whereas acknowledging the lingering tensions that divide them.
At a information convention after their assembly, Petro waved away questions on his rocky historical past with Trump, whom he has publicly accused of human rights violations.
As an alternative, he known as the interplay “ a gathering between two equals who’ve other ways of pondering”.
“He didn’t change his manner of his pondering. Neither did I. However how do you do an settlement, a pact? It’s not as between twin brothers. It’s between opponents,” Petro stated.
Individually, Trump advised reporters from the Oval Workplace that he felt good in regards to the assembly. “I assumed it was terrific,” he stated.
On the agenda for the 2 leaders had been points together with the battle towards transnational drug trafficking and safety in Latin America.
Listed below are 5 takeaways from Tuesday’s assembly.
A White Home appeal offensive
Over the previous 12 months, Trump has invited the media to take part in his conferences with overseas leaders, usually holding information conferences with the visiting dignitaries within the Oval Workplace.
Not this time, nonetheless. The assembly between Trump and Petro lasted almost two hours, all of it behind closed doorways.
However the two leaders emerged with largely constructive issues to say about each other.
In a submit on social media, Petro revealed that Trump had gifted him a number of objects, together with a commemorative photograph of their assembly accompanied by a signed word.
“Gustavo – an awesome honor. I really like Colombia,” it learn, adopted by Trump’s signature.
In one other post, Petro confirmed off a signed copy of Trump’s e-book, The Artwork of the Deal. On its title web page, Trump had scrawled one other word to Petro: “You might be nice.”
“Can somebody inform me what Trump stated on this dedication?” Petro wrote jokingly in Spanish on social media. “I don’t perceive a lot English.”
A turning level in a tense relationship?
Petro’s joke seemed to be a cheeky nod to his notoriously rocky relationship with Trump.
It was solely six days into Trump’s second time period, on January 26, 2025, that he and Petro began their feud, buying and selling threats on social media over the destiny of two US deportation flights.
Petro objected to the reported human rights violations going through the deportees. Trump, in the meantime, took Petro’s preliminary refusal to simply accept the flights as a menace to US “nationwide safety”. Petro finally backed down after Trump threatened steep sanctions on imported Colombian items.
They continued to commerce barbs within the months since. Petro, as an illustration, has condemned the deadly US attacks on boats within the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, evaluating the strikes with homicide.
He has additionally criticised Trump for finishing up a US navy offensive in Venezuela to abduct then-President Nicolas Maduro. That assault, Petro stated, was tantamount to “kidnapping”.
Trump, in the meantime, stripped Petro of his US visa following the Colombian chief’s look on the United Nations Normal Meeting, the place he criticised the US and briefly joined a pro-Palestinian protest.
The Trump administration additionally sanctioned Petro in October, blaming the left-wing chief for permitting “drug cartels to flourish”.
After eradicating Maduro from energy on January 3, Trump provided a warning to Petro: he had higher “watch his a**”. The assertion was extensively interpreted to be a menace of navy motion towards Colombia.
However Trump and Petro appeared to have reached a turning level final month. On January 7, the 2 leaders held their first name collectively. Tuesday’s in-person assembly marked one other first of their relationship.
Agreeing to disagree
Regardless of the easing tensions, the 2 leaders used their public statements after the assembly to reaffirm their variations.
Trump was the primary to talk, holding a information convention within the Oval Workplace as he signed laws to finish a authorities shutdown.
The US president, a member of the right-wing Republican Get together, used the looks to mirror on the political tensions the 2 leaders had within the lead-up to the assembly.
“He and I weren’t precisely the very best of mates, however I wasn’t insulted, as a result of I’d by no means met him,” Trump advised reporters.
He added that Tuesday’s assembly was nonetheless nice. “I didn’t know him in any respect, and we received alongside very nicely.”
Petro, in the meantime, held an extended information convention on the Colombian Embassy in Washington, DC, the place he raised some factors of divergence he had with Trump.
Among the many subjects he talked about was Israel’s genocidal conflict on Gaza, which the US has supported, and sustainable power initiatives designed to be carbon impartial. Trump, prior to now, has known as the so-called inexperienced power programmes a “rip-off”.
Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing chief, additionally mirrored on his area’s historical past with colonialism and overseas intervention. He advised reporters it was vital that Latin America make selections for itself, free from any exterior “coercion”.
“ We don’t function below blackmail,” he stated at one level, in an obvious reference to Trump’s strain campaigns.
Differing strategy to combating drug trafficking
One of many major factors of rivalry, nonetheless, was Petro’s strategy to combating drug trafficking.
Colombia is the world’s largest producer of cocaine, liable for 68 p.c of the worldwide provide.
The Trump administration has used the battle towards world drug trafficking as a justification for finishing up deadly navy strikes in worldwide waters and in Venezuela, regardless of consultants condemning the assaults as unlawful below worldwide regulation.
It has additionally stripped Colombia of its certification as an ally in its world counter-narcotics operations.
Trump’s White Home has said it is going to think about reversing that call if Petro takes “extra aggressive motion to eradicate coca and cut back cocaine manufacturing and trafficking”.
However Petro has rejected any try and label him as mushy on drug trafficking, as an alternative touting the historic drug busts his authorities has overseen.
He made this argument but once more after Tuesday’s assembly, claiming that no different Colombian administration had accomplished as a lot as his to battle cocaine trafficking.
Moderately than take a militarised strategy to destroying crops of coca, the uncooked ingredient for cocaine, Petro argued that he has had extra success with voluntary eradication programmes.
This push, he stated, succeeded in “getting hundreds of peasant farmers to uproot the plant themselves”.
“These are two completely different strategies, two other ways of understanding the right way to battle drug trafficking,” Petro stated. “One that’s brutal and self-interested, and what it finally ends up doing is selling mafia powers and drug traffickers, and one other strategy, which is clever, which is efficient.”
Petro maintained it was extra strategic to go after prime drug-ring leaders than to punish impoverished rural farmers by forcibly ripping up their crops.
“I advised President Trump, if you need an ally in preventing drug trafficking, it’s going after the highest kingpins,” he stated.
A Trumpian word
Tuesday’s assembly finally marked one more high-profile reversal for Trump, who has a historical past of shifting his relationships with world leaders.
Final 12 months, as an illustration, he lashed out at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a public Oval Workplace conflict, solely to heat to the wartime chief a number of months later.
However Colombia is shortly approaching a pivotal presidential election in Could, which can see Petro’s left-wing coalition, the Historic Pact, search to defend the presidency towards an ascendant far proper.
Petro himself can not run for consecutive phrases below Colombian regulation. However there’s hypothesis that Tuesday’s detente with Trump might assist Petro’s coalition keep away from US condemnation forward of the vote.
Colombia, in spite of everything, was till not too long ago the most important recipient of US help in South America, and it has lengthy harboured shut ties with the North American superpower. Straining these ties may due to this fact be seen as an election legal responsibility.
Whereas Petro acknowledged his variations with Trump throughout his remarks, at instances he expressed sure views that overlapped with the US president’s.
Like Trump has prior to now, Petro used a part of his speech on Tuesday to query the function of the UN in sustaining world safety.
“ Did it not present incapacity? Isn’t a reform wanted?” Petro requested, questioning aloud if there was “one thing superior to the United Nations that will deliver humanity collectively higher in a greater manner”.
However when it got here to donning Trump’s signature “Make America Nice Once more” baseball cap, Petro drew a line – or relatively, a squiggle.
On social media, he shared an adjustment he made to the cap’s slogan. A jagged, Sharpie-inked “S” amended the phrase to incorporate the complete Western Hemisphere: “Make Americas Nice Once more.”
