US President Donald Trump speaks to the media after arriving in Corpus Christi, Texas, USA on February 27, 2026.
Elizabeth Franz | Reuters
President Donald Trump is scheduled to gather with Latin American leaders at a Miami-area golf club on Saturday, as his administration seeks to further strengthen America’s foreign policy focus on the Western Hemisphere even as it grapples with a five-alarm crisis around the world.
The gathering, which the White House is calling the “Shield of the Americas” summit, comes just two months after President Trump ordered a bold U.S. military operation to capture Venezuela’s then-president Nicolas Maduro and bring the Maduros to the United States to face drug conspiracy charges.
Even more troubling is President Trump’s decision a week ago to start a war against Iran in cooperation with Israel. The conflict has killed hundreds of people, disrupted global markets and destabilized the broader Middle East.
He began Saturday with a social media post warning that more Iranian officials would be targeted in the war and that attacks on the country would escalate.
“Iran will be hit hard today!” Trump said.
President Trump’s time with Latin American leaders is limited. President Trump is scheduled to fly to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to wait for the dignified transfer of six American soldiers killed in a drone attack on a military headquarters in Kuwait, a day after the United States and Israel launched a military operation against Iran.
However, with the summit, President Trump will likely try to turn his attention to the Western Hemisphere, at least temporarily. He pledged to reaffirm America’s primacy in the region and halt what he sees as long-standing Chinese economic abuses in America’s backyard.
“Under previous leaders, we have become obsessed with every battlefield and border in the world except our own,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told regional leaders and defense ministers gathered in Florida this week for talks on combating drug cartels. “These elites have chosen a benign disregard that is far from benign, diminishing our power and presence in this hemisphere.”
who will participate
The leaders of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, and Trinidad and Tobago confirmed they will attend the rally at the Republican president’s golf resort, the Trump National Doral Miami. The president is also scheduled to host the G20 summit later this year.
The idea for a summit of like-minded conservatives from around the hemisphere emerged from the ashes of the 10th Summit of the Americas, which was canceled last year during the U.S. military buildup off the coast of Venezuela.
The host country, the Dominican Republic, had banned Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela from attending regional meetings under pressure from the White House. But after left-wing leaders from Colombia and Mexico threatened to pull out due to protests and there was no guarantee that Trump would attend, Dominican President Luis Abinader made a last-minute decision to postpone the event, citing “deep differences” in the region.
The American Shield nickname is intended to reflect President Trump’s vision for an “America First” foreign policy for the region, leveraging U.S. military and intelligence assets not seen across the region since the end of the Cold War.
But notably missing are Brazil and Mexico, the region’s two largest powers, and Colombia, which has long been a linchpin of the U.S. counternarcotics strategy in the region.
Richard Feinberg, who served on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration and helped organize the first Summit of the Americas in 1994, said the contrast could not be more stark.
“The first Summit of the Americas brought together 34 countries and carefully negotiated a comprehensive agenda for regional competitiveness, inclusiveness, consensus, and optimism,” said Feinberg, now a professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego. “The hastily convened Shield of the Americas mini-summit brings to mind a hunched defensive posture, with just a dozen participants huddled around a single powerful figure.”
Challenge from China
Since returning to the White House, President Trump has made countering Chinese influence in the hemisphere a top priority. His national security strategy promotes a “Trump corollary” to the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, which sought to bar European incursions into the Americas by targeting Chinese infrastructure projects, military cooperation and investment in the region’s resource industries.
The first demonstration of a more forceful approach was President Trump’s push for Panama to withdraw from China’s Belt and Road Initiative and review long-term port contracts held by Hong Kong-based companies amid US threats to retake the Panama Canal.
More recently, the U.S. takeover of Maduro’s government and President Trump’s pledge to “run” Venezuela has disrupted oil shipments to China, which was the largest buyer of Venezuelan oil before the attack, and threatens to draw one of Beijing’s closest allies in the region into the U.S. orbit. President Trump is scheduled to visit Beijing later this month and meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
But Evan Ellis, an expert on Chinese engagement in the region at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said even leaders who work closely with President Trump are reluctant to sever ties with China.
For many countries, China’s trade-focused diplomacy fills a critical fiscal vacuum in a region facing major development challenges, from poverty reduction to infrastructure bottlenecks. By contrast, President Trump has cut foreign aid to the region while rewarding countries behind immigration crackdowns, a policy that is widely unpopular across the hemisphere.
“The United States is proposing tariffs, deportations and militarization in the region, while China is proposing trade and investment,” said Kevin Gallagher, director of the Center for Global Development Policy at Boston University. “Leaders in the region would be wise to remain neutral and risk-averse so that they can exploit the escalation in U.S.-China tensions to their own advantage.”
Before the summit, President Trump announced that he would appoint Kristi Noem, who had just been fired as Secretary of Homeland Security, as Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas.
Noem said Trump will announce a “big deal” at the summit centered on “how we go after cartels and drug trafficking throughout the Western Hemisphere.”
