WITH the Trump imperium passing the half-year mark, the posture of the US empire is ever clearer. Call it the “new cold war” or – in Trump’s words, “endless war” – this is the era that the world has entered. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the carnage is less obvious because the weapons take the form of “soft power” – sanctions, tariffs, and deportations – yet these can be as deadly as bombs.

Trump is strengthening the attacks on Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Some Western leftists vilify the defensive measures these countries take to protect themselves from the empire’s regime-change schemes. In contrast, Washington clearly understands that they pose “threats of a good example.” Since Obama, all US presidents have certified them as “extraordinary threats to national security.”

Historian Isaac Saney says that Cuba shows how any misstep by the revolutionary government or deficiency within society is exaggerated and weaponised. The empire, he explains, not merely attempts to destabilise the economy but to suffocate it. It aims to incite internal discontent, distort people’s image of the government, and ultimately dismantle social gains.

While Cuba is affected worst by the hybrid war, both Venezuela and Nicaragua have also been damaged. All three countries have seen the ending of protection for their migrants in the US and hence cuts in the remittances they send to their home countries. Higher-than-average tariffs are threatened on Venezuelan and Nicaraguan exports to the US, together with severe restrictions on Caracas’s oil exports. Meanwhile, the six-decade US blockade of Cuba is further tightened.

However, all three countries are fighting back, forming new trade alliances with China and elsewhere. Mexico has supplied oil to Cuba and China is installing solar panel farms to address its daily power cuts. High levels of food security in Venezuela and Nicaragua have strengthened their ability to resist US sanctions, while Caracas successfully defeated one of Washington’s harshest migration measures by securing the release of 252 of its citizens incarcerated in El Salvador’s notorious prisons.

Venezuela’s US-backed far-right opposition is in disarray. The first Trump administration had recognised the “interim presidency” of Juan Guaido, followed by the Biden administration declaring Edmundo Gonzalez winner of Venezuela’s last presidential election. But the current Trump administration has yet to back Gonzalez, de facto recognising President Nicolas Maduro.

Nicaragua’s right-wing opposition is also reeling from a side-effect of Trump’s harsh treatment of migrants – many are returning voluntarily to a country claimed by the opposition to be “unsafe,” while US Homeland Security even extolled their home country’s recent achievements. And some of Trump’s prominent Cuban-American supporters are now questioning his “maximum pressure” campaign for going too far.

Latin America’s so-called Pink Tide, which began in Mexico in 2018, is in troubled waters. Current President Claudia Sheinbaum is perhaps the world’s most capable sparring partner with the buffoon in White House, who has threatened Mexico with tariffs, deportations and military interventions.

Left-leaning presidents Gabriel Boric in Chile and Gustavo Petro in Colombia are limited to single terms. Both have faced deep-rooted reactionary power blocs. Chilean Communist Party candidate Jeanette Jara is favoured in the first-round presidential election in November but will likely face a unified right-wing challenge in the second round.

As the first non-rightist in Colombia’s history, Petro has had a tumultuous presidency. He accuses his former foreign minister of colluding with the US to overthrow him, and the May 2026 elections could see the presidency reverting to the right.

Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will likely run for re-election in October 2026. With less than majority legislative backing, he has often capitulated to US pressure (as in his veto of Brics membership for Nicaragua and Venezuela). Regardless, Trump is threatening Brazil with a crippling 50 per cent export tariff and is blatantly interfering in the trial of former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, accused of insurrection. Lula commented that Trump, whose actions have angered Brazilians, was “not elected to be emperor of the world.”

In 2021, Honduran President Xiomara Castro took over a narcostate subservient to Washington and has tried to push the envelope to the left. Her term is ending, and putative successor for the Libre party, Rixi Moncada, faces a tough contest in November: she must see off persistent US interference.

Bolivia’s ruling Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) Party is locked in a self-destructive internecine clash between former President Evo Morales and his ex-protege and current President Luis Arce. The energised Bolivian right wing is spoiling for the August 17 presidential election.

Analyst Joe Emersberger notes: “Today, all geopolitics relates back to Gaza where the imperial order has been unmasked like never before.” Defying Washington, the Hague Group met in Colombia for an emergency summit on Gaza and several countries, including Bolivia, Cuba, Colombia, Nicaragua and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, pledged to take measures in support of Palestine. Brazil will join South Africa’s International Court of Justice action against Israel. Trump’s collaboration in the genocide of Palestinians motivated Petro to declare that Colombia must leave the Nato alliance and keep its distance from “militaries that drop bombs on children.”

At the other end of the political spectrum, the self-described “world’s coolest dictator” Nayib Bukele of El Salvador and confederates Javier Milei of Argentina and Daniel Noboa of Ecuador cosy up to Trump and devotedly support Israel. Noboa duly tells Israel’s Netanyahu that they “share the same enemies.”

In February, the US military’s Southern Command warned: “Time is not on our side” in tackling Russia and China’s influence in our “neighbourhood.” Yet China has become the region’s second largest trading partner and even right-wing governments are reluctant to jeopardise relations with Beijing. Trump has furthered US military penetration, notably in Ecuador, Guyana, Brazil, Panama, and Argentina, intervening in Haiti, Ecuador, Peru and threatening to do so in Mexico.

Despite Trump’s bluster – what the Financial Times calls “imperial incontinence” – his administration has produced mixed results. In Panama, President Jose Mulino’s obeisance to Trump’s ambitions to control the Panama Canal and reduce China’s influence provoked massive protests. While rightist political movements have basked in Trump’s fitful praise, resistance is growing. As the empire’s grip tightens, so too does the resolve of those determined to break free from it.

Roger D. Harris is with the Task Force on the Americas, the US Peace Council, and the Venezuela Solidarity Network. Nicaragua-based John Perry is with the Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition and writes for MR Online, the London Review of Books, FAIR and CovertAction, among others.