relations

Donald Trump is expected to meet Colombian President Gustavo Petro on Tuesday after a year of exchanging insults and threats over the United States president’s aggressive foreign policies in Latin America, and Bogota’s war on drugs.

Petro’s visit to the White House in Washington, DC, on February 3 comes just one month after the US abduction of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro in a lightning armed assault on Caracas.

The Colombian leader will likely be seeking to address diplomatic tensions with the US, which have been in disarray since Trump began his second term last year.

The 65-year-old left-wing Petro has been a vocal critic of Trump’s foreign policies and recent military operations in the Caribbean Sea as well as of Israel’s war on Gaza – a thorny topic for the US president.

Last month, tempers rose again when Trump threatened to target Colombia militarily for allegedly flooding the US with illegal drugs.

Have relations between the two always been frosty?

No. After Colombia gained independence from Spain in 1819, the US was one of the first countries to recognise Colombia’s independence in 1822. It established a diplomatic mission there in 1823.

A year later, the two nations signed a string of treaties focusing on peace, navigation and commerce, according to US government archives.

Since then, the two nations have continued to cooperate on security and economic matters. But these efforts have been interrupted at times, such as during the Cold War, by geopolitics and in relation to Colombia’s war on the drug trade.

Here is a timeline of key issues and events.

Business interests threatened

In 1928, US businesses were operating in Colombia. But their interests were threatened when Colombian employees of America’s United Fruit Company protested, demanding better working conditions. Political parties in Colombia had also begun questioning Washington’s expanding role in Latin America following these protests.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), this was also the period of the “Banana Wars” when Washington was busy toppling regimes in South America to shore up its business interests in the region.

A string of US military interventions took place from 1898 to 1934 as Washington sought to expand its economic interests in the region until President Franklin D Roosevelt introduced the “Good Neighbor Policy”, pledging not to invade or occupy Latin American countries or interfere in their internal affairs.

Emergence of FARC

Security relations between the US and Colombia deepened during the second world war. In 1943, Colombia offered its territory for US air and naval bases while Washington provided training for Colombian soldiers.

According to the CFR, the US boosted military support for Colombia during its deadly conflict with armed rebel groups, which lasted from 1948 until the mid-1950s and killed more than 200,000 people. During this conflict, many independent armed groups emerged in the countryside, and the US implemented a strategy known as Plan Lazo to improve civilian defence networks.

In response, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was formed by rebel leaders and engaged in widespread violence and kidnappings, according to the CFR.

FARC claimed to be inspired by communist values and, in the late 1940s, controlled about 40 percent of the country, according to the CFR. Washington labelled it as a “terrorist” organisation and focused efforts towards destabilising the group.

FARC eventually signed a peace agreement with the Colombian government in 2016. In 2021, the group was delisted from Washington’s foreign terrorist organisations’ list.

War on drugs

As FARC was rising in Colombia, the drug trade was also gathering momentum. Groups such as the Medellin Cartel and Cali Cartel emerged in the country, and trafficked marijuana and cocaine to the US on a regular basis.

Faced with a rising number of drug-related deaths, the US government spent more than $10bn on counter-narcotics and security efforts to aid Colombia’s government between 1999 and 2018, according to a US Government Accountability Office report.

Former US presidents, including Bill Clinton and George W Bush, also launched counter-narcotic initiatives to disrupt drug trafficking, destroy coca crops, and support alternative livelihoods for coca farmers, in a bid to quash the cartels.

Trump’s first term as president, beginning in 2017, was marked by renewed counter-narcotic initiatives but he also threatened to decertify Colombia as a cooperative country if it did not take action against its drug cartels.

Tensions between the US and Colombia calmed under former US President Joe Biden, who focused on improving diplomatic ties by designating Colombia as a major non-NATO ally in 2022.

Today, cartels function in a decentralised manner and some have also been designated as terrorist organisations by the US. In December 2025, the Trump administration designated the Gulf Clan, Colombia’s largest illegal arms group, which is also involved in drug trafficking, as a terrorist organisation.

Trump’s second term

In 2022, Petro was elected as Colombia’s first left-wing president and took up office in the presidential palace with promises to lead Colombia in a more equitable, eco-friendly direction.

But tensions with the US flared again when Trump arrived in the White House for his second term in January 2025.

Since then, Petro has been a vocal critic of Trump’s policies, particularly those relating to Latin America.

Last year, the Trump administration began a series of military strikes on Venezuelan boats, which it alleged were carrying drugs, in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. The Trump administration has struck dozens of boats, but has not provided any evidence that any were trafficking drugs. Petro called the aggression an “act of tyranny”.

Addressing the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025, Petro said that “criminal proceedings must be opened against those officials, who are from the US, even if it includes the highest-ranking official who gave the order: President Trump”, in relation to the boat strikes.

At the UNGA, Petro also criticised US ally Israel’s war on Gaza and called on US troops to “disobey Trump’s orders” and “obey the order of humanity”.

Washington revoked Petro’s US visa after he spoke at a pro-Palestine march outside the UNGA in New York.

Weeks later, the Trump administration also imposed sanctions on the Colombian president, who is set to leave office following a presidential election in May.

In a post on his Truth Social platform in October, Trump said Petro “does nothing” to stop the drug production [in his country], and so the US would no longer offer “payment or subsidies” to Colombia.

Shortly after carrying out the abduction of Venezuela’s Maduro, Trump told reporters on board Air Force One that both Venezuela and Colombia were “very sick” and that the government in Bogota was run by “a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States”. “And he’s not going to be doing it very long. Let me tell you,” Trump added.

When asked if he meant a US operation would take place against Colombia, Trump said, “Sounds good to me.”

In response, Petro promised to defend his country, saying that he would “take up arms” for his homeland.

In an interview with Al Jazeera on January 9, however, Petro said his government is seeking to maintain cooperation on combating narcotics with Washington, striking a softer tone following days of escalating rhetoric.

Jan. 29 (UPI) — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer emerged from a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Thursday to pronounce that ties between the two countries were back on track, with progress made on trade, tourism and business travel and disrupting illegal migration.

Speaking to reporters after his 80-minute meeting with Xi in the Great Hall of the People, the first by any British leader in eight years, Starmer said it was “very good, productive session with concrete outcomes” that represented a substantive advance.

“It was a real strengthening of the relationship and that’s in the national interest because, of course, there are huge opportunities here in China. A lot of the discussion was about how we open up access for those opportunities, focusing, as I always do, on how this is going to be delivered back in the United Kingdom, how does it benefit people back at home,” he said.

Starmer said headway had been made on Scottish whisky tariffs, visa-free travel to China for Britons and a border security deal on deporting illegal immigrants from Britain, tackling Chinese gangs producing synthetic opioids, and cutting off the flow of Chinese-made marine engines used by people smugglers moving migrants across the English Channel in small boats.

Starmer’s meeting with Xi ran for more than double the period of time scheduled for the talks.

Downing Street later confirmed British citizens would be permitted visits for tourism or business purposes of up to 30 days without a visa.

On issues where they did not see eye to eye, the two sides agreed to “maintain frank and open dialogue,” according to the readout from No. 10.

Starmer insisted he raised human rights at the meeting, including the treatment of the Uyghur minority in China and media mogul and democracy activist Jimmy Lai, a British citizen who has been in prison in Hong Kong since 2020 on sedition and other charges.

He said they had a “respectful discussion” and that his Chinese hosts had listened, with Starmer pointing out that the opportunity to raise “issues we disagree on” was part of the rationale for engagement.

Praising the contributions of past Labour governments to building Sino-British ties, Xi said that China stood ready to move beyond the “twist and turns” to develop a “long-term relationship” with Britain and “consistent, comprehensive, strategic partnership” that would benefit both peoples and the wider world.

However, no major deal or breakthrough came out of the meeting with the only agreement thus far a $20.7 billion investment in China through 2030 by U.K. pharma-giant AstraZeneca to expand its Chinese operation, particularly its work on anti-cancer cell therapy.

The Conservatives’ shadow national security minister, Alicia Kearns, who had urged Starmer to make the release of Lai and the lifting of sanctions on British MPs a condition of his visit, doubled down on her criticism.

“Keir Starmer’s visit tells the Chinese Communist Party they can carry on just as they are,” she wrote on X.