So Trump will likely get his way in more cases than not. But he shouldn’t celebrate just yet, because the short-term payoff of strong-arming Latin America will come at the long-term cost of accelerating the region’s shift toward China and increasing its instability. The latter tends, sooner or later, to boomerang back into the United States.

Rift between US and Colombia, threats of tariffs on Mexico, designs on Panama Canal and mass deportations could encourage closer ties with Beijing

Mexico, Colombia and Brazil are all pushing back on Trump's deportation of migrants in handcuffs or on military planes.

Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan hit a brief stumbling block on January 26 when Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, refused to allow two US flights carrying deported Colombian migrants to land. Petro’s complaint was that the US government was treating the migrants like criminals by repatriating them in military planes.