By Catherine Osborn
Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.
The highlights this week: A review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement gets underway, Colombia and China boost ties amid increasing U.S. pressure, and Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado travels to Norway to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
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Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney (left), Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum (second from left), and U.S. President Donald Trump (right) attend the final draw of the 2026 Men’s FIFA World Cup, seen in Washington on Dec. 5. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
The Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy has raised eyebrows across Latin America for how it describes the U.S. goal of dominating the Western Hemisphere. Referencing the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, the White House pledged to box out external powers and reward countries that align with Washington.
What’s still unclear, however, is how the Trump administration plans to try to achieve its stated goal of an “economically stronger and more sophisticated” hemisphere when it comes to the biggest set of rules governing U.S. trade in the region: the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, known as USMCA.
A free trade deal has been in place among the three countries since 1994. Many experts argue that Trump violated USMCA, which replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement in 2020, with his tariffs on Canada and Mexico this year. But he has also granted both countries some exemptions from U.S. levies because of the deal.
USMCA has a built-in review process after its first six years. The review kicked off in recent weeks with consultations in all three countries about whether officials and businesspeople want to keep, tweak, or scrap the agreement. The process is due to conclude by July 2026.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told Politico last week that the United States is open to walking away from USMCA entirely if it feels that it is not getting a fair shake. Though congressional hearings this month revealed that U.S. lawmakers and businesses were broadly favorable to the deal, that does not mean that the administration agrees.
Last Friday, Trump met with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on the sidelines of the 2026 Men’s World Cup draw in Washington. While Carney said afterward that the three leaders agreed to work together toward renewing USMCA, the White House did not immediately comment.
The mixed signals from the United States are rattling Canada and Mexico, where a successful conclusion of the USMCA review process could end uncertainties over Trump’s tariff threats. But a U.S. exit from the deal “would be catastrophic from an economic perspective and from a foreign-policy perspective,” said Canadian trade expert Eric Miller, the president of the Rideau Potomac Strategy Group consultancy.
The ease of transit for goods has helped the North American trading bloc become one of the three main economic poles of the world, alongside the European Union and the Asian Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership trade bloc, Chilean scholar César A. Hidalgo writes. Key technologies such as semiconductor chips are made with inputs, assembly, and testing from across North America, as are cars and medical devices.
Trump’s pledged commitment in the National Security Strategy to an economically strong Western Hemisphere could bode well for a USMCA renewal. But in case the United States withdraws from or seeks to weaken the deal, both Mexico and Canada have spent the year trying to cultivate relationships with trade partners beyond the hemisphere—and with each other.
The Canadian Council for the Americas, a prominent think tank where Miller is a board member, launched a report last month laying out recommendations for Canada to partner with Latin American countries in areas such as critical minerals, agriculture processing, labor migration, and infrastructure.
Canadian officials and businesses are engaging more with the region, starting with Mexico. Canada is due to carry out a trade mission to the country in February, with business leaders scoping out opportunities. It will be one of Canada’s largest-ever such missions, its ambassador to Mexico said this week.
Sunday, Dec. 14: Chile holds a presidential runoff election.
Saturday, Dec. 20: Mercosur heads of state attend a meeting in Paraguay that is also expected to include European Union officials.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro attends the opening ceremony of the Fourth Ministerial Meeting of the Forum of China and Community of Latin American and Caribbean States in Beijing on May 13.Pedro Pardo/AFP via Getty Images
Colombia in China. Colombian officials are looking to China for partnership, as relations with the United States have soured amid spats between Trump and Colombian President Gustavo Petro. Trump has accused Petro of not working hard enough against drug traffickers and said this week that Petro could “be next” in U.S. efforts targeting alleged trafficking in Latin America.
Colombia will hold a presidential election in May 2026. Bloomberg reported last week that at least three candidates traveled to Beijing this year, although the publication did not reveal their identities. The trips followed Petro’s May visit to China, during which Colombia officially joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Other Colombian politicians are giving different signals, however. Last month, conservative legislators visited Taiwan and said Colombia planned to open an office in the country—a statement that was soon denied by the Colombian Foreign Ministry. Despite the rebuttal, the resulting tensions with Beijing led Petro to delay another planned visit to China.
Kingpin strategy, tested. For decades, hard-line anti-gang tactics in Latin America have operated using what the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency calls the “kingpin strategy”: kill the leader to weaken the gang. But scholarly research in recent years, much of it in Mexico, has pointed to other conclusions—namely, that killing a gang chief can increase violence as criminal groups scramble to fill a power vacuum.
It’s rare to see multicountry quantitative studies that examine this phenomenon across Latin America, but a new paper by Mount Mary University criminologist Patrick Burke does just that. He looked at so-called leadership decapitation incidents in regions of Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Venezuela between 2022 and 2024.
Burke found that the decapitations, whether perpetrated by security forces or crime groups, were associated with an increase in battle deaths. In a departure from some scholarship from Mexico, his study suggested that when the government did the killing, it did not necessarily reflect a power vacuum dynamic because the subsequent deaths came from gang-on-state battles.
Overall, Burke told Foreign Policy, it would be wise for policymakers to work to prevent drug gangs from becoming so powerful in the first place.
Leading in style. Sheinbaum was one of just two world leaders to appear on the New York Times’s list of the most stylish people of 2025. (The other was Pope Leo XIV.) She favors dresses and suits that feature embroidery by female Mexican artisans, many of whom are Indigenous.
When commenting on making the list on Wednesday, Sheinbaum said she hopes to change the fact that some people in Mexico look negatively on wearing a huipil, a tunic with embroidery.
Sheinbaum has also gone to bat against major clothing labels accused of appropriating Indigenous designs. Earlier this year, she criticized Adidas for a design that appeared to knock off the Indigenous huarache sandal style of Indigenous Zapotecs. Adidas apologized for its design and pledged to have a “respectful dialogue” with the Zapotec community.
Another figure on the New York Times most stylish list was Puerto Rican musician Bad Bunny, who also put reggaeton back at the top of Spotify’s most-streamed musicians list of 2025, dethroning Taylor Swift. Which of the following songs is not from his 2025 album?
A. “Ojitos Lindos”
B. “Nuevayol”
C. “Debí Tirar Mas Fotos”
D. “Baile Inolvidable”
Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado waves to supporters in Oslo, Norway, on Dec. 11.Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images
Venezuela’s pro-democracy movement is in the international spotlight this week, as opposition leader María Corina Machado was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway.
Machado has been in hiding since a brief public appearance January. The government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has issued an arrest warrant against her, and the country’s attorney general said she would become a “fugitive” if she leaves Venezuela.
But earlier this week, Machado made a dramatic exit, traveling by boat to Curaçao and then by plane to the United States and Norway. Bad weather reportedly delayed her arrival, so she missed the Nobel award ceremony on Wednesday by a few hours.
Machado’s daughter delivered her acceptance speech on behalf of Venezuela’s pro-democracy movement. Machado greeted supporters in Oslo shortly after arriving during the night and gave a press conference on Thursday morning.
Since winning the prize, Machado has signaled support for the potential use of U.S. military power to oust Maduro, prompting criticism from some peace activists. When asked Thursday whether she would support a U.S. invasion of her country, Machado did not directly answer the question, saying instead that Venezuela had already been invaded by the influence of foreign powers such as Russia and Iran.
Machado made a specific call for countries that support Venezuela’s pro-democracy struggle to deny the Maduro government illegal revenue from contraband of drugs, oil, and human smuggling—a strategy that the United States appeared to take on Wednesday when it seized what it said was a sanctioned oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast.
Politicians from across Latin America and from the United States traveled to Oslo to honor Machado. The ceremony served as a vindication for the Venezuelan pro-democracy movement, Pedro Garmendia wrote in Caracas Chronicles, adding that “our struggle is neither fringe nor futile.”
A. “Ojitos Lindos”
That song is from 2022’s Un Verano Sin Ti.
