The “Shield of the Americas” Summit and Trump’s Latin America Strategy
The US cannot sustain its influence in the Western Hemisphere through only multilateral bodies that the Trump administration chooses to engage with.
The Trump administration has made the Western Hemisphere a focal point of its foreign policy. From Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling for an “Americas First” foreign policy to the announcement of a Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine to the prominence of the Americas in the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS), the administration has made clear that it sees the Americas as part of the US’ immediate sphere of influence. At the same time, however, the administration has turned away from multilateral engagement with the region.
The administration has withdrawn from three regional bodies and threatened to cut funding for several other key regional bodies—even as the recently passed budget secured a $75 million increase in funding for the Inter-American Development Bank’s private-sector portfolio. Questions surrounding the administration’s approach to the region and no clear commitment that President Donald Trump would attend also led to the postponement of the X Summit of the Americas, slated for last December.
Rather than working toward a postponed Summit of the Americas, the Trump administration is hosting the “Shield of the Americas Summit” with select Latin American leaders in Miami on March 7, 2026, suggesting that its approach is to narrow the alliance to like-minded leaders to support US interests in the region. While this is not the first administration to attempt this approach, the region’s challenges—and US interests in the region—require a collective, long-term commitment. This approach fails to generate the necessary support and risks failing to meet its longer-term objectives.
Building a Right-Wing South American Alliance
In the 2025 NSS, the administration outlined its “Enlist and Expand” strategy for the Western Hemisphere. The enlist-and-expand strategy relies on the United States identifying and partnering with like-minded countries and leaders in the region to collectively pursue US interests. Secretary Rubio has championed the approach of finding ideologically reliable partners even before Trump won the 2024 election.
As described in the NSS and in Rubio and other Trump regional advisors’ previous writings, the objective of these efforts is to limit Chinese engagement in the Americas while securing key trade and investment opportunities for US businesses—particularly in countries viewed as friendly to the United States.
The expansion component relies on leveraging these partnerships and pressuring others to join the US-backed bloc. We have already seen the Trump administration apply pressure to countries through various means to ensure that their allies remain in power, such as providing Argentinian President Javier Milei with a financial lifeline or attempting to tilt the scales in elections to support their preferred candidate, as in the 2025 Honduran election.
The reported Americas Shield Summit in Miami fits well within this paradigm. Those invited to the summit include Presidents Javier Milei (Argentina), Rodrigo Paz (Bolivia), Rodrigo Chaves (Costa Rica), Daniel Noboa (Ecuador), Nayib Bukele (El Salvador), Nasry Asfura (Honduras), José Raul Mulino (Panama), and Santiago Peña (Paraguay), as well as Presidents-Elect José Antonio Kast (Chile) and Laura Fernández (Costa Rica)—all leaders that are emblematic of the recent right-ward shift in the region. For the administration, these leaders represent important allies, and the meeting is an opportunity to show why countries should side with the United States.
Latin America’s Political Pendulum and US Short-Termism
While agreements reached by this group of leaders will likely yield short-term gains for the Trump administration and participating states, this minilateral, ideological approach to regional affairs remains short-sighted—both for the United States and for partner nations in the region.
Relying on close personal or ideological relations between individual leaders—particularly in democratic societies where the political winds will eventually shift—runs the risk of undermining the development of longer-term bilateral relations. Within regional affairs, perhaps the clearest example of this risk played out in US-Argentine relations.
In the 1990s, then Argentine President Carlos Menem sought to improve relations with the United States. Menem’s Argentina supported US trade discussions, sent troops to support the first Gulf War, and even became a Major Non-NATO Ally of the United States. Menem once described the bilateral relationship as so close that the countries were involved in “carnal relations.”
While some have pointed to the improved bilateral relationship under Javier Milei as a resurrection of this point of view, it is important to note that despite the close relationship that the United States and Argentina had in the 1990s, the 2000s, and early 2010s, the relationship was marked by confrontation and animosity between Washington and Buenos Aires.
The current moment runs the same risks. The Trump administration’s efforts to build relations with (mostly newly elected) leaders with an ideological affinity could be a risky and short-sighted prospect. While some of the Trump administration’s forceful actions in the region (like the capture of Nicolás Maduro) have found support from regional publics, many analysts have argued that his heavy-handed approach to the region is likely to generate a backlash in the future by creating a political movement that is opposed to US intervention in much the same way as US actions during the Cold War inspired the anti-imperialist tendencies in Latin America’s Pink Tide leaders. While the United States was able to cooperate with some of these leaders, both the Bush and Obama administrations faced challenges in engaging with the region due to the legacies of US imperialism.
Trump’s approach has already created nationalist backlash in some countries and undermined his own efforts, most notably in Brazil and Canada. While last year’s Canadian elections appeared to favor a more pro-Trump candidate, Trump’s comments on making Canada the 51st state and tough line on trade negotiations led to the election of Mark Carney, a leader who has been one of the staunchest Trump critics. Likewise, efforts to support Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro surrounding his trial for undermining Brazilian democracy bolstered Trump critic Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva’s popularity, allowing Brazil to weather Trump’s tariffs on the country.
The Western Hemisphere’s Crowded Field of Multilateral Bodies
At the same time, efforts to develop minilateral mechanisms to address regional affairs face key challenges. The Miami meeting could establish the Americas Shield Alliance—an organization that will enter an already crowded field of regional institutions. Today, there are over 40 organizations and bodies—including trade blocs, formal political organs, and subregional entities—that are specific to the Americas.
The proliferation of regional bodies creates unique challenges that undermine the credibility and effectiveness of different organizations as they seek to address collective challenges. One way that this is done is by creating spaces for countries to “forum shop” for an organization that meets their specific interests or political preferences rather than addressing the underlying structure of regional bodies or finding consensus on how to address a particular challenge.
The issue is even more daunting when regional organizations are based on ideological cleavages. For instance, in 2008—at the height of the left-wing Pink Tide in Latin America—South American leaders created the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) to promote integration of the continent. As the Pink Tide receded and right-wing leaders were elected in several countries in the region, countries withdrew from the organization and, in 2019, replaced it with the Forum for the Progress of South America (PROSUR)—an alliance of right-wing leaders in the region.
The creation of additional ad hoc bodies that are ideologically aligned but lack mechanisms to monitor or maintain progress on regional integration efforts can undermine the ability of any regional body to address the collective action problems that are always evident in global governance.
How to Recalibrate US Engagement with the Americas
US re-engagement with the region is a positive sign for regional affairs and could improve US standing in the Hemisphere. However, the approach taken by the Trump administration could create a backlash in the region that would undermine US interests and weaken collective action to address regional challenges.
If Trump wants to have a lasting legacy in the Americas and one that improves US standing in the Hemisphere, the administration will need to reconsider its approach. The administration needs to ensure that it does not undermine these gains by being viewed as an imperialist bully or by undermining the regional organizations that allow the United States to collaborate with the region, address collective challenges, and develop long-term strategies to promote a stable and productive region.
While the mini-Latin American meeting in March may yield symbolic victories for the administration and even some meaningful concessions, the administration would be wise not to think of this as a substitute for developing a Hemispheric consensus or attending the Summit of the Americas.
*Adam Ratzlaff is the founder and CEO of Pan-American Strategic Advisors—a boutique consultancy and think tank focused on the Western Hemisphere—and a member of Diplomatic Courier’s World in 2050 Brain Trust. Ratzlaff conducted political and economic analysis for organizations including the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and Southern Pulse Correspondents. His research interests include US-Latin American foreign policy, Sino-Latin American foreign policy, Pan-American cooperation, the defense of democracy in the Americas, fiscal policy, and economic and social development in Latin America. He has published extensively on these topics in popular venues, including Diplomatic Courier, The National Interest, and Charged Affairs.