The US State Department has notified Congress that it will redirect $52mn in foreign military financing away from Slovakia, North Macedonia, Tunisia and Iraq and towards Panama, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia, the Associated Press reported.

Foreign military financing helps recipient governments buy US-made military equipment. The announced reprogramming does not end financing for the four countries losing funds, although the amount remaining for each was not immediately clear.

The State Department said the current distribution of financing does “not align with the administration’s prioritisation of” the Western Hemisphere. Spending the money in Latin America will help recipients “combat narcoterrorism in our backyard and help continue to secure the Panama Canal” and “prevent adversaries from establishing strategic footholds in our hemisphere”, the department said.

The notification followed a tour of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru by Secretary of State Marco Rubio that ended on September 10, and comes as President Donald Trump places growing emphasis on the Western Hemisphere. Trump has embraced the term “Donroe Doctrine” for an approach that builds on the Monroe Doctrine, which President James Monroe articulated in 1823 to warn European powers against further colonisation in the Americas. The administration says it intends to strengthen US influence in the region while preventing rival powers from gaining strategic positions there.

Recipients have moved closer to Washington

Since Trump returned to office in January 2025, all four recipients have taken steps to align themselves more closely with his administration’s priorities.

Panama withdrew from China’s Belt and Road Initiative in 2025, a decision President José Raúl Mulino said was Panama’s own. Mulino has nonetheless pushed back on Trump’s suggestion that the US should retake control of the Panama Canal.

At the canal’s ports, meanwhile, Panama’s Supreme Court ruled in January that a concession held by Panama Ports Company, a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison Holdings, to run the Balboa and Cristóbal terminals at either end of the canal was unconstitutional. The government took over the terminals in February. Trump had alleged that China was running the canal. In August, CK Hutchison, which is controlled by the family of billionaire Li Ka-shing, began arbitration seeking more than $1.5bn in damages from Panama, while a separate arbitration by Panama Ports Company seeks more than $2bn. Mulino’s government has rejected both claims.

Ecuador signed a reciprocal trade agreement with the US in March, under which it committed to cut tariffs on US goods in key sectors and Washington agreed to remove a 15% tariff surcharge on more than half of Ecuador’s non-oil exports. President Daniel Noboa has also embraced the administration’s counternarcotics stance. US forces have intercepted and sunk vessels that Washington says are linked to Ecuadorian criminal groups, part of a wider campaign in the Caribbean and Pacific that has killed more than 200 people since last year and that United Nations bodies and rights groups have called extrajudicial. Voters, however, rejected Noboa’s proposal to allow foreign military bases in Ecuador in a referendum last year.

Rubio met Noboa in Quito on September 9, announcing a new terrorist designation for the criminal group Los Tiguerones and pledging to seek an additional $45mn in security funding, which requires congressional approval, alongside a separate $10mn initiative targeting illegal gold mining. Ecuador’s navy has received seven vessels from Washington so far this year, and Rubio said a 110-foot Coast Guard cutter and five interceptor boats would follow in the coming months.

Peru has said it will join the US-led "Shield of the Americas" anti-cartel coalition, launched by Trump in March and whose members include Argentina, Ecuador and El Salvador. President Keiko Fujimori, who took office in July, announced the decision on September 10 after meeting Rubio in Lima. She is the daughter of former far-right president Alberto Fujimori, who was convicted of human rights abuses.

Rubio’s visit to Lima also brought two King Air surveillance aircraft worth $35mn and $20mn in foreign military financing for Peru, which Washington designated a major non-NATO ally in January.

Colombia has also realigned with Washington this year, following the arrival in office in August of President Abelardo de la Espriella, whom Trump publicly endorsed during the campaign. A lawyer nicknamed El Tigre (The Tiger), de la Espriella previously represented clients including Alex Saab, a businessman close to Venezuelan ousted president Nicolas Maduro charged in the US with money laundering. He has pledged a tougher approach to organised crime, including resuming aerial fumigation of coca crops, and last month announced Bogota's accession to the "Shield of the Americas."

Rubio opened his tour in Barranquilla on September 8, where the two governments signed memorandums of understanding on civil nuclear cooperation and critical minerals. Colombia also presented its “21st Century Patriot Plan”, a proposal to modernise its aircraft, radar, drones, air defence and special forces capacity. Rubio said Washington had not ruled out joint or shared military bases in Colombia to fight organised crime, but that any such arrangement would proceed only at Bogotá’s formal request.

However, Colombia remains on a US list of countries that have “failed demonstrably” to combat drug trafficking for a second consecutive year, according to a presidential determination published earlier this week. Trump nonetheless said Colombia was “poised to resume its place as our foremost security partner in the hemisphere” and could be removed from the list if it shows measurable progress on coca eradication and dismantling narco-terrorist networks over the coming year. Rubio said closer cooperation could allow Colombia, which remains by far the world's largest coca producer, to regain its anti-narcotics certification in 2027. Washington maintains that assistance to Colombia remains “vital” to US national interests, a clause typically paired with a waiver that preserves financial aid.

Washington has applied pressure elsewhere in the hemisphere

The Trump administration has also brought military and economic pressure to bear across the rest of the Western Hemisphere.

In January, US forces captured then Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and whisked them to New York to face federal “narco-terrorism” charges, which they deny. Trump subsequently said Washington would “run” Venezuela and control revenues from its key oil industry.

Since Maduro's removal, Washington has warmed to the government of Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro's former vice-president and now acting president, who proved receptive to White House requests to open the country's oil and mineral resources to US investors. The Treasury Department took her off its Specially Designated Nationals sanctions list in April, and on August 28 Trump announced a deal giving the US a stake in Venezuela’s oil reserves. On September 16, he removed Venezuela from the “failed demonstrably” list, saying cooperation with Caracas was “paying dividends”. The thaw could soon extend to a face-to-face meeting: Axios reported that Trump is weighing a meeting with Rodríguez in New York next week, when she is due to travel to the UN General Assembly.

Washington has also ramped up sanctions and imposed a fuel blockade on Cuba this year, cutting off vital Venezuelan oil supplies to the island and threatening tariffs on countries that supply it with fuel. The resulting shortages have contributed to prolonged blackouts and an energy crisis.

In Honduras, Trump intervened directly in the 2025 presidential election by publicly endorsing the conservative candidate, Nasry Asfura. He also pardoned former President Juan Orlando Hernández, a member of Asfura’s National Party who had been convicted in the US on drug-trafficking charges.

Taken together, these developments have redrawn the region's political map. Venezuela has become a de facto US protectorate, while Colombia, Ecuador and Peru now join Argentina under President Javier Milei and Chile under President José Antonio Kast in a bloc of right-leaning governments that have drawn closer to the Trump administration. That leaves Brazil and Mexico as the only major nations still governed from the left.