How Latin America Sees Trump’s Win
Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.
The highlights this week: How Donald Trump’s U.S. election victory could impact Mexico and Brazil, Bolivia faces turmoil as key leaders duel, and Venezuelan outmigration ticks upward.
Trump’s Victory, Seen From the South
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump frequently mentioned Latin America on the campaign trail, and his election victory has already reverberated across the region—particularly in Mexico and Brazil.
The biggest and most immediate foreign-policy effects of Trump’s second presidency will likely be felt in Mexico. Through his last rally this week, he piled on new pledges to punish the country for allegedly using its manufacturing sector to take U.S. jobs and sending fentanyl, crime, and other ills northward via migrants.
If Mexico didn’t stop “this onslaught of criminals and drugs,” Trump told supporters in North Carolina on Monday, he would impose tariffs of between 25 and 100 percent on all goods imported from Mexico.
On Wednesday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said at her morning press conference that Mexicans have “not a single reason to worry” about the U.S. election result. A day later, she spoke with Trump by phone and described the exchange as “very cordial.” But Sheinbaum’s optimistic comments are still an acknowledgment that Trump’s threats are real.
Mexico and the United States are each other’s top trading partners, and tariffs could bring profound shocks to both countries’ economies. Economic analysts have also projected that Trump’s inflationary policies could prompt higher U.S. interest rates, which generally means that less foreign money flows into Latin American countries.
That’s before calculating the disruptive economic impact of Trump’s promised mass deportation campaign, which could chip away at the flow of remittances that many Latin American immigrants send to family members back home. Remittances make up around 20 percent of GDP in El Salvador and Guatemala and 3.5 percent in Mexico.
Trump’s presidency could also affect Brazilian politics. To start, the president-elect’s tendency to shun global engagement may give Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva more space to pursue his international ambitions.
“Trump’s hostility toward the post-World War II global order established and maintained by the United States could further multipolarity, a development that would favor Brazil,” historian Andre Pagliarini wrote this week in Foreign Policy.
Lula has fashioned himself as someone who can bridge geopolitical and income divides; he is comfortable liaising with Washington, Beijing, Brussels, and Moscow. A proponent of active nonalignment, Lula has been outspoken against Israel’s war in Gaza and suggested mediating peace between Russia and Ukraine. Brazil will host the G-20 leaders’ summit later this month.
At the same time, the Democrats’ loss carries an implicit warning for Lula. The Brazilian leader will be 80 when Brazil holds its next presidential election in 2026, and he is contemplating running again. Although Lula is more popular than U.S. President Joe Biden, the late candidate switch-up in the United States suggests that it could be prudent to cultivate new standard-bearers in the left-wing Workers’ Party sooner rather than later.
Lula’s chief political opponents are feeling empowered by the election result. Far-right former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who endorsed Trump in a video over the weekend, sent his son to the Mar-a-Lago election watch party. On Wednesday morning, the U.S. national anthem rang out in my Rio de Janeiro neighborhood, which swung for Bolsonaro when he was elected in 2018 and then went for Lula in 2022.
As Democrats conduct postmortems, some Latin American observers have argued that the party can learn from counterparts in the region—such as leftists in Mexico. Sheinbaum’s Morena party was a rare incumbent this year that not only retained the presidency but also grew its congressional majority.
Amid the inflation of the last several years, Morena officials raised Mexico’s minimum wage dramatically and exhaustively communicated their intent to carry out economic programs to support the poor. Voters cited those policies during Mexico’s June election, and they appeared to overpower concerns about other problems in the country, such as security.
“The Democrats didn’t come out to vote because there is not a populist and transformative political project” within the party, Mexican writer and communications consultant Alberto Lujambio posted on X.
Upcoming Events
Friday, Nov. 8, to Sunday, Nov. 10: Argentina’s Fiesta de la Tradición celebrates gaucho culture.
Monday, Nov. 11, to Friday, Nov. 22: Latin American delegations head to the COP29 climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Monday, Nov. 18, to Tuesday, Nov. 19: Brazil hosts the G-20 leaders’ summit in Rio de Janeiro.
What We’re Following
Venezuelan outmigration. A nearly 70 percent jump in the number of Venezuelans crossing the Darién Gap from August to September suggests that the country’s postelection crackdown may be spurring a new wave of emigration. Venezuela’s disputed election was in late July; hundreds of people have been detained since then for their political behavior, according to rights groups.
A mid-September survey by the Estrategia & Poder consultancy found that 26 percent of Venezuelans wanted to leave the country and 6 percent had specific plans to do so.
Many countries that imposed sweeping sanctions on Caracas in the past have refrained from such action now to avoid exacerbating Venezuela’s economic strife. This new approach can be seen in the country’s oil sector: After the United States issued some limited permissions to companies such as Chevron to do business in Venezuela, the country’s October exports hit a four-year high.
Morales vs. Arce. Former Bolivian President Evo Morales began a hunger strike last Friday, which he said he would only end if President Luis Arce agreed to a political dialogue. Arce was once Morales’s protégé, but the two men are now in a bitter struggle for control of Bolivia’s Movement for Socialism party.
Their disputes include whether Morales should be able to run for president in elections next year. Morales’s supporters have carried out road blockades across the country in recent weeks, and he accused the government of trying to assassinate him—claims it denied. As of Thursday, Arce still showed no sign that he would meet with Morales.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris meets with members of the norteño band Los Tigres del Norte before speaking at a campaign rally in Phoenix on Oct. 31.Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
Norteño music goes political. In many ways, the U.S. presidential election was a wake-up call to the importance of Latino voters. Democrats have historically earned most of the group’s support, but Trump made inroads with Latinos throughout the United States this year. An Edison Research exit poll found that 46 percent of Hispanic voters picked Trump in 2024, up from 32 percent in the 2020 election.
On the campaign trail, U.S. political parties leaned on a range of Latino cultural influencers for outreach, especially musicians. Though reggaetón stars such as Bad Bunny and Don Omar endorsed Harris last week, her rallies have also featured norteño music. The genre—folk ballads generally played by an ensemble with an accordion—can be heard in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands; one norteño group even wrote a song praising Trump after his assassination attempt.
Question of the Week
What genre was not a predecessor to norteño music?
Bachata is from the Dominican Republic.
FP’s Most Read This Week
- Why She Lost by Michael Hirsh
- How Did Voter Turnout Compare? by Anusha Rathi
- Why Men’s Makeup Matters in Politics by Derek Guy
In Focus: Mexico’s Court Reform Survives
Judicial workers and civil society members protest Mexico’s judicial reform in front of the country’s Supreme Court in Mexico City on Nov. 5.Victor Cruz/AFP via Getty Images
This week, Sheinbaum faced her first major political test since taking office, as Mexico’s sweeping judicial overhaul came before the country’s Supreme Court.
Mexico’s legislature passed the reform in September over the objections of business groups, rule-of-law experts, and the U.S. government. All argued that the measure’s key tenet—the popular election of judges instead of appointment—harms judicial independence.
Sheinbaum’s predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, originally championed the initiative. But Sheinbaum embraced it, too, criticizing the thousands of judges who went on strike or took other steps to protest the reform during the first few weeks of her administration.
This week, the Supreme Court formally heard a challenge proposed by one of the court’s own justices that aimed to invalidate parts of the overhaul by limiting the number of judges who would stand for election. It was pitched as a “compromise” to address criticisms.
Eight of 11 votes on the top court were required for the challenge to pass. But in a Tuesday session, the challenge only earned seven justices’ votes, and it was discarded. Popular elections for judges appear set to move forward, though eight of the current Supreme Court justices say they are resigning first.
One justice wrote that the challenge to the reform “would inevitably lead us to the rupture of the balance that must exist between judicial moderation and respect for the division of powers.” Now, the Supreme Court’s decision “shuts the possibility of a constitutional crisis,” Autonomous University of Mexico State political scientist Juan Carlos Villarreal told Bloomberg.
The ruling calmed the choppy political waters, at least for now. Sheinbaum’s second (and likely defining) major test, of course, is Trump.