Will Venezuela be back on the United States agenda?

Marco Rubio, of Cuban origin and the first Hispanic nominated as United States Secretary of State, promises to reorient Washington’s attention towards Latin America under a second term of Donald Trump, at a critical moment marked by the immigration issue and Chinese investments in the region.

The great campaign promise of the president-elect is to carry out the largest deportation in the country’s history, which anticipates that “Latin America will have the most central role in the foreign policy of the United States in the last 30 years,” maintains Brian Winter, expert from the Americas Society organization.

At the head of US diplomacy, Rubio “will bring enormous attention to a region that the United States has often overlooked,” adds Henry Ziemer, from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Considered a ‘hawk’ in foreign policy, this Florida senator born in Miami 53 years ago has distinguished himself by being a hard-liner with China and Iran, as well as a firm defender of Israel.

He has also paid enormous attention to Latin America, being a firm supporter of sanctions against Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, as well as critical of the leftist governments of Mexico and Colombia, and a supporter of Javier Milei’s Argentina.

“Rubio sees the region with a strong ideological spectrum: he divides it between left and right leaders, between rivals and friends,” explains Winter.

The mystery of Venezuela or the end of “Florida politics”

One of the unknowns that the Trump team has not clarified is the policy it will maintain towards Venezuela, after Nicolás Maduro proclaimed his re-election in elections questioned by the international community.

During his first term, from 2017 to 2021, the Republican chose to apply maximum pressure on the Caribbean country with sanctions to overthrow Maduro, but he remains in power and the crisis in the country has caused thousands of Venezuelans to migrate to the United States. .

The main reason for the insistence on Venezuela was not so much a desire for interventionism but a desire to win votes in the key state of Florida, with a significant population of Cuban and Venezuelan voters, Michael Shifter, former director of the Diálogo analysis center, told EFE. Interamerican.

With the electorate in the state already solidly Republican, Trump now has no such incentive. On the contrary, the future president could try to “give in to Maduro and perhaps recognize him to reach an agreement on migration and give business opportunities to his friends” in the country with the largest oil reserves in the world.

The truth is that in order to deport Venezuelan migrants, against whom Trump has led a campaign of stigmatization and has promised mass deportations, the United States needs to reach an agreement with Venezuela, a country with which it does not have diplomatic relations.

The Joe Biden Administration resumed deportation flights after a brief pause in the oil sanctions imposed on the country.

According to Adam Isacson, an expert at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), the other option to accelerate deportations would be to pressure Mexico, and other countries such as Colombia, to accept Venezuelan migrants.

Mexico and the review of the T-MEC with Rubio

What seems very clear is that “Mexico will be at the forefront of the policies of the second Trump Administration with regard to both migration and the economy,” Ziemer highlights.

Concern is growing in Washington about Chinese investments in strategic industries such as electric vehicles in Latin America and especially in Mexico, a country with which the United States has the T-MEC free trade agreement.

Trump himself said in the campaign that he wanted to open the USMCA review process in 2026 and Rubio has been one of the legislators who has positioned himself most in favor of countering Chinese operations in the region.

The Republican, who already threatened Mexico with tariffs in his first term to force greater control of migratory flows, will once again use this letter in trade negotiations.

«I do not think that breaking the agreement is the most likely path, but it is possible. “Companies are underestimating him,” Winter warns.

By Eduard Ribas and Alejandra Arredondo