For most of the time since Donald Trump won office as president of the United States, Colombia appeared safely out of his crosshairs. Preoccupied with the likes of Mexico and China, he barely uttered a word about the country, giving traders in Bogota the confidence to steadily bid up the peso and stock prices.
The calm was shattered at 1:29 p.m. on Sunday, when Trump suddenly unleashed, via social-media, an economic war on Colombia — 25% tariffs, sanctions, extraordinary cargo inspections, travel restrictions — as retribution for its refusal to receive deportees.
That Colombia quickly backed down — President Gustavo Petro accepted most of Trump’s demands later that evening — and prevented the broad market collapse many feared is, to a certain extent, immaterial. What stuck with investors across emerging markets is that with an emboldened Trump aggressively pushing his America First agenda at home and abroad, no trade is now truly safe. Any asset anywhere in the world, and especially those found in financially fragile developing nations, can be buffeted by a tweet or an offhand remark at any moment.
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