The State Department told Congress it will strip $52M in military financing from Iraq, Tunisia, Slovakia and North Macedonia for Panama, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia.
Days earlier, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had toured Colombia, Ecuador and Peru to pledge support to their conservative leaders. Slovakia and North Macedonia belong to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, whose members Donald Trump has berated for years over defence spending.
The amount is small and the direction unmistakable.
Washington has chosen to lavish its favours on friendly capitals in the Americas, and the allies it neglects are drawing sensible conclusions by bonding with one another.
Rewards for Friendly Capitals
The reroute is the budgetary end of Washington’s hemispheric campaign, which began with force. Rubio’s South American tour builds on the operation that removed Nicolás Maduro in January and on the oil deal Trump struck with Caracas in August.
The State Department justified the reroute by pointing to drug trafficking and the security of the Panama Canal. Trump celebrates a renewal of the Monroe Doctrine, the nineteenth-century warning that once told European powers to keep away from the Americas. Two centuries later, budgets in Bratislava, Skopje, Baghdad and Tunis pay for its enforcement.
Washington hands friendly governments military financing and hands Cuba a blockade. Cuba has endured an oil blockade since January, and its power grid collapsed again recently, one of at least six failures this year.
Greenland and Potash as Leverage
Last week, Trump announced a security agreement with Denmark and Greenland that he says gives Washington “permanent control over security, and all other needs”. The announcement ended months of threats against Denmark, and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen insisted it respects the sovereignty of the Kingdom.
Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen welcomed the agreement, so the outcome arrives with more grace than the threats that preceded it. Trump gains an achievement to advertise before the midterm elections.
Canada receives far rougher handling. Trump promoted a deal to buy Belarusian potash at a price “substantially less than we are currently paying to Canada”. The USA imports nearly 85% of its potash from Canada, and the EU bans the Belarusian product and has frozen the assets of its state producer Belaruskali.
Since potash is plentiful, Josh Linville of StoneX expects little effect on farm prices. The gesture serves politics, and Saskatchewan’s miners hear the message anyway.
Canada Answers From Strasbourg
Ottawa replied in Strasbourg the same week. Prime Minister Mark Carney welcomed European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s invitation to become the first associate member of the EU. The treaties have yet to define associate membership.
Trump had suggested the arrangement could be a “hostile act” and threatened heavy tariffs on Europe. Carney told the European Parliament, “We are not fair-weather allies.” Member states would need to design and ratify any such status, so the substance remains distant.
The direction is obvious in Ottawa and Brussels alike. Every tariff and threat hands Canadians another reason to court European friends, and the EU, which gains Canada with its minerals, energy and Arctic coastline, has every incentive to say yes.
Where Hemisphere First Policy Leads
Redirecting $52 million buys Washington goodwill in Lima, Bogotá and Panama City. Iraq, Tunisia, Slovakia and North Macedonia should still receive some assistance, though the amount is unclear.
Loyalty purchased with reallocated budgets lasts as long as the budget and the mood of Washington. Governments in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru know Washington can squeeze favoured neighbours, as Havana can attest.
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