After forcing Colombia to back down, White House claims America is respected again

CNN — Donald Trump claimed an early victory for a coercive foreign policy based on tariffs and hard power on Sunday after announcing Colombia had backed down in a dispute over migrant repatriation flights. “President Trump will continue to fiercely protect our nation’s sovereignty, and he expects all other nations of the world to fully cooperate in accepting the deportation of their citizens illegally present in the United States.” Colombia’s foreign minister soon confirmed that US deportation flights had resumed. White House border czar Tom Homan told CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez Sunday that the new multiagency approach on immigration enforcement was a “game-changer.” “Today’s operation was all of government. We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States!” But Petro had his own response on X: “Trump, I don’t really like traveling to the US, it’s a bit boring.” The leftist president even suggested that Trump considers “me an inferior race and I’m not, nor is any Colombian.” Ryan Berg, director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Petro may have had his reasons to pick an early fight with Trump — not least amid dissatisfaction with the existing trading relationship with the US, a longtime military ally. It was no coincidence, therefore, that China’s ambassador to Colombia chose Sunday afternoon — as diplomatic insults flew between Trump and Petro — to point out an interview in which he recalled that Colombia’s foreign minister said last year that relations between Bogota and Beijing were at their “best moment” in 45 years.