You are listening to the Briefing, first broadcast on 27 January 2025 on Monocle Radio.
Hello and welcome to the Briefing, broadcasting live from Studio one here at Midori House in London.
I'm Chris Chermack.
Coming up on today's Colombia's President Petro backs down in the first tariff war of Donald Trump's administration.
We'll have the details and ask whether Latin America's leaders can find ways to actually cooperate on immigration as a superpower.
Other countries in the world, specifically countries in this hemisphere, need the United States more than the United States needs the hemisphere.
I think that's a longstanding perception.
After that, we'll get the latest on Lebanon's extended ceasefire.
We'll have a roundup of Nordic news and a fashion roundup with Monocle's Natalie Theodosi.
All that right here on the Briefing with me, Chris Chermak.
US President Donald Trump can chalk up a first victory to his threat of tariffs as a means of having countries and their leaders do his bidding.
This is after Colombia's President, Gustavo Petro refused to let military planes carrying deported migrants land in Colombia.
The lightning quick imposition of a tariff on Colombian goods by Washington prompted him to change his mind, not before President Petro released quite the emotional statement proclaiming Colombia's independence.
Andrew Thompson is a journalist and political risk analyst specializing in Latin America and joins me now.
Andrew, great to have you back on the show.
Can you first of all just walk us through this weekend's events?
Yes, I think the thing to bear in mind is that deportations have been going on for a number of years.
What's happened is obviously the Trump presidency has put much, much greater priority on them and a number of Latin American countries are beginning to react.
In particular, there's what you might call a troika of Colombia, Mexico and Brazil who are basically saying, yes, it's in the US's rights to send undocumented aliens back to US, but it has to be done respecting their dignity.
And in Petro's case in Colombia, he seems to have objected to the use of military planes rather than civilian planes to send people back to Colombia.