Trump Backs Colombia Right-Winger; Petro Warns of Interference

Colombia · Election Watch

A US presidential endorsement has injected Washington directly into Colombia’s runoff campaign — and drawn a sharp sovereignty rebuke from the outgoing head of state.

Trump weighs into the Colombia runoff

US President Donald Trump on June 2 endorsed Abelardo de la Espriella, the right-wing lawyer who finished first in Colombia’s May 31 first round, ahead of the June 21 presidential runoff. In a social-media post, Trump said the result was “very important to the future of Colombia and its relationship to the United States,” predicted de la Espriella would be “tremendously successful” in growing the economy, creating jobs and cracking down on crime and drugs, and described his opponent, leftist senator Iván Cepeda, as a “Radical Left Marxist.” De la Espriella welcomed the endorsement as a vote of confidence in his vision for Colombia and its ties with Washington.

The intervention is notable for its directness. Trump has previously backed right-wing candidates elsewhere in the region, and the endorsement follows months in which de la Espriella cultivated ties with conservative figures in Washington. It also lands against a fraught backdrop: the Trump administration has decertified Colombia as an anti-narcotics partner and imposed sanctions on Petro and members of his family over alleged ties to organised crime, marking the lowest point in bilateral relations during Petro’s term.

Petro invokes sovereignty in the Colombia runoff

President Gustavo Petro, who is constitutionally barred from seeking re-election, responded on social media without naming Trump directly. “When one country interferes in another country’s decisions, freedom dies,” he wrote, inviting Colombians to “vote in complete freedom and not become slaves or a colony of anyone.” He framed the matter as one of national sovereignty, arguing that the choice of president belongs exclusively to Colombian citizens and that no foreign power, whatever its economic or political weight, should intervene in the country’s democratic debate.

The exchange crystallises a contest that was already among the most polarised in recent Colombian history. De la Espriella, an outsider of the Defensores de la Patria movement who has modelled his law-and-order pitch on figures such as El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele and Argentina’s Javier Milei, has campaigned on strengthening ties with Washington. Cepeda, a veteran senator and close Petro ally of the Pacto Histórico coalition, represents continuity of the outgoing government’s negotiation-based security approach and its tax and social agenda.

What is at stake for markets and the region

For international investors, the runoff is a binary on policy direction. Analysts have framed a Cepeda victory as broad continuity of Petro-era policy on the energy transition, fiscal redistribution and pension reform, and a de la Espriella win as a hard-right turn on security and fiscal consolidation, with an accelerated normalisation of relations with the Trump administration. Colombia is Latin America’s second-largest oil exporter after Brazil and the third-largest Spanish-speaking economy in the region, so the outcome carries weight for sovereign risk and for the country’s posture in a regional map increasingly defined by alignment with or distance from Washington.

With just over two weeks until the vote, both campaigns are competing for the bloc of undecided and first-round protest voters that will decide the result. The polls remain close and contested, and the candidates’ own pollsters diverge on the runoff math. The practical effect of a foreign endorsement on Colombian voters — whether it consolidates de la Espriella’s base or hardens opposition to outside influence — is itself now part of the campaign’s final stretch.