Calling Petro ‘drug leader,’ Trump halts U.S. aid to Colombia, a key ally in region
Calling Colombian President Gustavo Petro “an illegal drug leader,” President Donald Trump announced Sunday the end of all U.S. aid to the South American country, upending the relationship with one of the region’s closest military allies at a time of a massive U.S. buildup near neighboring Venezuela.
Trump said Petro, who he said has “a fresh mouth toward America,” is “strongly encouraging the massive production of drugs, in big and small fields” throughout Colombia, which the president misspelled as Columbia. “Petro does nothing to stop it, despite large scale payments and subsidies from the USA that are nothing more than a long term rip off of America.”
“AS OF TODAY, THESE PAYMENTS, OR ANY OTHER FORM OF PAYMENT, OR SUBSIDIES, WILL NO LONGER BE MADE TO COLUMBIA,” Trump said. “Better close up these killing fields immediately, or the United States will close them up for him, and it won’t be done nicely.”
In a series of posts on X, Petro responded Sunday that “trying to promote peace in Colombia is not being a drug trafficker” and that “Trump is deceived” by his advisers.
The Colombian president called Trump “ignorant” and told him to read One Hundred Years of Solitude, a novel written by Colombian Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez, that follows the members of the Buendía family in a cycle of wars and political disillusionment in the fictional town of Macondo.
“Mr. Trump, Colombia has never been rude to the US; on the contrary, it has deeply loved its culture,” he wrote. “But you are rude and ignorant toward Colombia. Read, as your chargé d’affaires in Colombia did, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and I assure you that you will learn something from solitude.”
In another post, Petro called on Colombians living in Chicago to join a general strike.
Tensions with the Colombian leftwing leader have escalated recently.
On Friday evening, Petro accused the U.S. of killing a Colombian fisherman in a boat strike last month that he said happened in Colombia’s territorial waters.
“U.S. government officials have committed murder and violated our sovereignty in territorial waters,” Petro wrote on X. “Fisherman Alejandro Carranza had no ties to drug trafficking and his daily activity was fishing. The Colombian boat was adrift and had a distress signal on.”
The Trump administration is carrying strikes in Caribbean waters near Venezuela in what it says is a counternarcotics operation, but seems also to be a push to oust Venezuela’s strongman Nicolás Maduro. The legality of the strikes has been questioned internationally and at home, and the administration has yet to provide Congress any evidence the people killed were trafficking drugs.
On Sunday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said the U.S. military struck Friday a vessel suspected of carrying drugs that was affiliated with the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), a guerrilla group operating in Colombia that the U.S. has designated as a terrorist organization. Hegseth said the three “male narco-terrorists” on the boat died and that the strike happened in international waters.
Last month, the U.S. State Department revoked Petro’s visa after he urged the U.S. military to disobey Trump, amid comments about the war in Gaza during a rally in New York.
“Do not point your rifles at humanity,” he said. “Disobey Trump’s order, obey humanity’s order.”
Petro, a former guerrilla member, has called Trump “an accomplice of the genocide” in Gaza.
Colombia is the recipient of the largest amount of U.S. aid to any country in Latin America and is a key military ally in the region. President Joe Biden designated Colombia as a major non-NATO ally in 2022.
Congress appropriated $377.5 million for foreign assistance for Colombia in 2024 and a similar amount for 2025, with certain restrictions out of concerns over Petro’s policies and counternarcotics efforts.
For first time since 1997, Trump administration said last month that Colombia was not compliant with its obligations as a drug-control partner, but issued the country a waiver on national security grounds to maintain cooperation.
Trump and Petro clashed early in January over migrant deportation flights. After both leaders slapped tariffs on each other’s countries following Petro’s initial refusal to allow two U.S. military flights carrying deported Colombian migrants to land in his country, Petro quickly backtracked.
Petro’s popularity has dipped in Colombia, where he faces tensions with the Colombian congress amid allegations of taking money from drug trafficking for his presidential campaign.
This story was originally published October 19, 2025 at 11:19 AM.