Trump Has His Own Monroe Doctrine

Ahead of November’s U.S. presidential election, several right-wing Latin American leaders have been open about their support for Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump. Among them are Argentine President Javier Milei, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, and former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, as well as their allies and supporters. “With Trump’s election, we can see a major turnaround. And we will, God willing,” Eduardo Bolsonaro, the former president’s son and member of Brazil’s Congress, said at Brazil’s Conservative Political Action Conference in July.

Trump supporters across Latin America identify with the former U.S. president’s various culture war crusades and economic policies. Many also suggest that his return to the White House would put an end to U.S. interventions abroad and create a more peaceful world. In 2022, Jair Bolsonaro said, “Some think the war in Ukraine would not have happened if [Trump] were still been in power. I agree with that.” Bia Kicis, a politician and Bolsonaro ally, recently told the New York Times, “Back when Trump was a candidate, there was talk of a possible third war. But there was no war—until Trump left office, and now war is affecting the whole world.” Agustín Laje, an Argentine writer and Milei supporter, said that Trump’s return is essential “to guarantee peace.”

But there is strong evidence that, at least in the case of Latin America, Trump’s return to the White House would lead to a far more interventionist U.S. foreign policy, as was the case during his first term. At the time, Trump adopted “maximum pressure” tactics against countries like Cuba and Venezuela, and pressured—in vain—countries like Brazil to ban Chinese tech giant Huawei.

A second Trump presidency would likely see the return of more explicit U.S. pressure on Latin American countries to pick sides in the brewing competition between the United States and China. That could create considerable friction in the region, just as it did during Trump’s first term in office, when many countries warmed to China’s embrace. The more aggressive Trump’s approach to Latin America, the faster governments can be expected to balance Washington by fostering closer ties to Beijing.

Most of the recent U.S. administrations have explicitly distanced themselves from the Monroe Doctrine, which, in 1823, asserted Washington’s authority over meddling European powers in Latin America. The doctrine was often used as a pretext for U.S. military or diplomatic interventions in the Western Hemisphere and was largely seen as a form of U.S. imperialism, especially during the 20th century. In 2013, then-Secretary of State John Kerry announced, “The era of the Monroe Doctrine is over.”

Trump and his allies, however, have explicitly defended the doctrine. At the United Nations General Assembly in 2018, Trump argued that “it has been the formal policy of our country since President Monroe that we reject the interference of foreign nations in this hemisphere and in our own affairs.” This time, the warning was not directed at Europeans, but at Russia and China, the latter of which became the main trading partner of most South American countries in the last decade.

Perhaps the most extreme element of Trump’s worldview was revealed by his former National Security Advisor John Bolton, who noted in his 2020 book, The Room Where it Happened: A White House Memoir, “Trump insisted he wanted military options for Venezuela and then keep it because ‘it’s really part of the United States.’” In April 2019, Bolton said, “Today, we proudly proclaim for all to hear: The Monroe Doctrine is alive and well.”

All this suggests that Trump’s isolationist foreign policy in the world at large translates into a stronger urge to dominate the Western Hemisphere, a detail often lost on Trump supporters in the region. As Johns Hopkins University professor Hal Brands argued in Foreign Affairs, “‘America First’ would feature a reenergized Monroe Doctrine: U.S. retrenchment from Old World outposts would presage intensified and perhaps heavier-handed efforts to safeguard American influence in the New World, and to prevent rivals from gaining a foothold there.”

In retrospect, Trump’s strategy in Latin American failed to achieve its goals. Despite crippling sanctions and menacing rhetoric, the regimes of Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba—which Bolton dubbed the “Troika of Tyranny”—remain in power. Trump’s efforts to convince Latin American governments to ban Huawei or downgrade their ties to China also did not produce any tangible results. Even during the Bolsonaro administration, Brazil’s trade with China only grew.

The Trump administration’s strategy vis-à-vis Huawei in particular caused bewilderment among Latin American policymakers. The United States pressured Latin American countries to exclude Huawei as a component provider of their 5G networks, arguing that the company could be used as a Trojan horse for Chinese spying activities. At the time, Trump officials threatened governments in Europe and Latin America not to use Huawei, warning them that doing so could lead Washington to stop sharing U.S. intelligence with them.

Yet Washington ignored political realities in Latin America, where there was little appetite among political or economic elites to confront Beijing. Worse, the United States offered no real alternative to Chinese 5G technology; Huawei’s competitors—including Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung—were more expensive, and Washington refrained from offering to pay the difference.

Trump’s warnings about the dangers that Huawei posed also largely fell flat: To most Latin Americans, there is little daylight between being spied on by China and being spied on by the United States, which has—for example—refused to apologize for putting former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff under NSA surveillance, among many other instances of U.S. interventionism and covert activities in the region.

Trump’s muscular approach to the region largely served Beijing’s interests; Latin American governments strengthened ties to China to balance Trump’s posturing. Beijing has emphasized respecting sovereignty in its interactions with Latin American governments, aware of how attractive the prospect sounds to governments across the global south.

While Trump ultimately decided against a military intervention to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, his aggressive rhetoric had the region on edge. Even the remote specter of a U.S. invasion led to a rally-round-the-flag effect that strengthened Maduro’s narrative that Venezuela faces serious threats to its sovereignty. It also became an opportunity to blame all the country’s economic woes on U.S. sanctions. As a result, several regional leaders reluctantly sided with Maduro.

Although Trump’s hostile approach to Latin America during his first term as president failed, he would likely repeat the strategy upon returning to the White House, Juan Gabriel Tokatlian, a professor at Torcuato Di Tella University in Buenos Aires, warned in Americas Quarterly. Republican senators and representatives have presented resolutions reaffirming the Monroe Doctrine’s validity. Numerous leading voices in the Republican Party also regularly employ threatening language toward the region.

Last year, Trump lamented the United States’ loss of control over the Panama Canal. Trump, his vice presidential pick J.D. Vance, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley have all threatened to bomb Mexico to combat drug cartels. Such rhetoric—which promotes U.S. violations of international law—is a boon to anti-American voices and would make it easy for China to position itself as a more attractive partner in the region.

Trump could impose high tariffs against products from countries that are engaged in initiatives to circumvent the dollar. That would likely apply to Brazil, which uses local currencies for some of its trade with fellow countries in the BRICS grouping. Mexico is likely to be one of the countries most affected by Trump’s return, as he pledges to impose hefty tariffs on goods produced in the country, reduce immigration, and cut the U.S. trade deficit.

Trump may back down from some of his most extreme proposals for Latin America, however. If he followed through on his pledge to conduct mass deportations of more than 10 million undocumented immigrants, the majority of whom hail from the region, remittances would drop and returning workers could de-stabilize labor markets. The resulting worker shortage would negatively affect the U.S. economy and potentially increase inflation, making it unlikely Trump fully delivers on his threats.

During Trump’s first term, leaders from Brasília to Buenos Aires were largely able to ride out U.S. pressure to align with Washington and move away from China. Across the region, there continues to be a consensus that multialignment between great powers remains feasible for years to come and that U.S. pressure to reduce ties to China can be resisted at little cost.

Trump is often described as holding a transactional foreign-policy view, and the same applies to most Latin American governments. Brazil is a case in point: While President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s decision to refrain from unequivocally condemning Russia for its war in Ukraine has been couched in moralistic language—accusing the West of hypocrisy—it is, above all, rooted in hard-headed pragmatism. Brazil’s positioning on the war, for example, allowed it to save millions of dollars when purchasing Russian diesel and fertilizers at a heavy discount. Protecting ties to Moscow is seen as crucial to preserving Brazil’s strategic wiggle room and constraining the United States.

For the same reason, Latin American countries care little about U.S. rhetoric about the risks of being technologically dependent on a dictatorship like China, as embodied by the Huawei dispute. Governments would certainly consider excluding Huawei from their 5G networks if doing so would create a measurable economic benefit. But without tangible U.S. incentives or funding, that seems implausible.

Trump’s attempts to reduce China’s role in Latin America via a renewed Monroe Doctrine will likely backfire again. In Trump’s erratic approach to foreign affairs, Latin American leaders perceive instability—and believe that they must hedge relations with the United States to strengthen their ties to other large powers.