President Donald Trump is preparing to host a gathering of Latin American leaders on Saturday at his Trump National Doral Miami golf resort near Miami, Florida. This meeting, known as the “Shield of the Americas” summit, aims to emphasize the Trump administration’s renewed commitment to focusing U.S. foreign policy on the Western Hemisphere. The event comes amid a backdrop of multiple global crises demanding the administration’s attention, including a recent military conflict involving Iran and ongoing tensions in Venezuela.
The summit represents an effort by President Trump to momentarily shift the international spotlight back to the Americas, underscoring his promise to reassert U.S. dominance in the region. This move comes as part of a broader pushback against what the administration perceives as growing Chinese economic influence in Latin America — an area that Trump has identified as America’s strategic backyard. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, speaking to regional leaders and defense ministers in Florida ahead of the summit, criticized previous U.S. administrations for neglecting the hemisphere. He suggested that past leaders prioritized conflicts and borders far from home, which weakened U.S. power and presence in the Americas.
Several Latin American countries have confirmed participation in the “Shield of the Americas” summit, including Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, and Trinidad and Tobago. The meeting will be held at the Trump National Doral Miami golf resort, a venue also slated to host the upcoming Group of 20 summit later this year. The gathering is seen as a forum for like-minded conservative governments in the region, emerging out of the fallout from the canceled 10th Summit of the Americas.
Last year’s Summit of the Americas was abruptly postponed amid heightened U.S. military activities near Venezuela. The host country, the Dominican Republic, was pressured by the White House to exclude Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela from the meeting. This exclusion sparked backlash from left-leaning leaders in Colombia and Mexico, who threatened to boycott the event. With no firm commitment from President Trump to attend, the Dominican Republic ultimately postponed the summit, citing “deep differences” within the region.
In contrast to the inclusive spirit of past Summits of the Americas, the “Shield of the Americas” summit is more narrowly focused and has a distinctly defensive tone. It reflects President Trump’s “America First” foreign policy, leveraging U.S. military and intelligence capabilities in the hemisphere to a degree unseen since the Cold War. However, the event notably excludes some of the hemisphere’s most influential players. Brazil and Mexico, the region’s two dominant powers, along with Colombia, a key U.S. partner in anti-narcotics efforts, will not be attending.
Experts note the stark difference between this summit and the original Summits of the Americas. Richard Feinberg, a scholar who helped plan the first summit in 1994, remarked that the initial gatherings were marked by inclusivity, consensus-building, and optimism about regional competitiveness. In contrast, the current “Shield of the Americas” appears defensive and limited in scope, gathering only a dozen or so nations around a single dominant figure — President Trump.
Central to the Trump administration’s agenda in the region is countering China’s expanding influence. The White House’s national security strategy explicitly highlights what it calls the “Trump Corollary” to the historic Monroe Doctrine. This policy seeks to prevent Chinese infrastructure projects, military cooperation, and investments in Latin America’s resource sectors from gaining further foothold. One notable example of this approach was the administration’s pressure on Panama to withdraw from China’s Belt and Road Initiative and review contracts held by a Hong Kong-based company managing port operations, with U.S. officials threatening to intervene to protect the Panama Canal.
The U.S. military operation targeting Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, which involved an attempt to capture Maduro and bring him to the U.S. on drug conspiracy charges, also fits within this strategy. Venezuela has long been a close ally of China in the region, and disrupting Maduro’s regime threatens to curtail oil shipments to China, which is Venezuela’s largest crude buyer. This operation underscores the administration’s determination to pull Venezuela back into Washington’s orbit. President Trump is scheduled to travel to Beijing later this month to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, an encounter likely to highlight tensions over influence in Latin America.
Despite the U.S. administration’s hardline stance, many Latin American countries have been cautious about severing ties with China.