Trump's Proposed Cabinet's Record on Latin America
Trump's Proposed Cabinet's Record on Latin America
Who has the incoming president picked to serve in roles that deal with the Americas, like border czar and secretaries of state and the treasury?
This article was originally published on November 20, 2024 and has since been updated.
Since his election on November 5, Donald Trump has begun to announce his team for his second presidential term. Among the secretaries, ambassadors, and advisors, some of the picks have extensive histories with Latin America. That includes his nominee for secretary of state, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who, if confirmed, would be the highest serving Latino in U.S. history.
AS/COA Online breaks down his picks so far that touch on Latin America and details their histories with the region. This includes Cabinet-level posts, department heads who attend joint high-level meetings with the president, and executive office positions, who serve as advisors to the president and other federal agencies. Cabinet-level posts must be confirmed by at least half of the 100-member Senate. Executive office positions do not require confirmation.
Confirmation required? Yes
Cabinet level? Yes
After nearly 14 years in the Senate, Marco Rubio of Florida is Trump’s nominee to be secretary of state, the United State’s top diplomat. If confirmed, Rubio, who is Cuban American, will be the highest ranking Latino official in U.S. history.
Rubio serves on the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee and has been an outspoken voice in Washington on Latin American issues. During Trump’s first term, Rubio was sometimes called the “virtual secretary of state for Latin America” by newspapers. In fact, Rubio sat in for Trump at the 2018 Summit of the Americas in Lima, Peru. In his Senate career, he has had to vet all U.S. officials and ambassadors who work in the region and he’s a frequent visitor to the region on state business. “There’s nobody in the U.S. Senate who comes close to having his affinity and depth of knowledge on Latin America,” said Trujillo to TIME magazine.
Throughout his career, the Spanish speaker has been vocal against the regimes in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. On Cuba, Rubio is a strong supporter of maintaining the embargo. He has criticized moves undertaken by Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden to thaw relations between the countries through polices like an expansion of visas or lifting travel restrictions. On Venezuela, Rubio was against the Biden administration’s loosening of sanctions in the run up to the July 28 elections and opposes any negotiation with what he calls Maduro’s “narco-dictatorship.” He recognized Edmundo González as the rightful winner of that contest. While Rubio once mentioned the possibility of a military intervention in Venezuela, he has since ruled out the option.
Rubio has criticized leftist leaders in the region, like Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva or Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, especially for what he sees as their support for the Cuban, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan regimes. He called out Chilean President Gabriel Boric for his stance on the Israel–Hamas war and accused the leader of allowing Hezbollah to operate business in his country.
Rubio also been especially critical of leaders as furthering the presence of China in the region. In a Senate Committee on Foreign Relations subcommittee hearing, he said, “Unfortunately, many of these newer leaders in the region have expressed admiration for the Communist Party in China’s model … So Beijing sees this, and they’re seizing the opportunity to grow both their influence and their power in the Western Hemisphere.” In the Senate, he’s spoken out against China leveraging the advantages of U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) by moving its manufacturing to Mexico.
Rubio is friendlier to leaders he thinks expressed “strong support for the American-led international order, as well as a strong desire for greater economic collaboration with the United States,” as he put it in an editorial in The National Interest. He went on to say: “We must take seriously the opportunities for collaboration presented by countries like Ecuador, El Salvador, Argentina, Paraguay, the Dominican Republic, Peru, Guyana, and Costa Rica.” He’s proposed legislation to strengthen security cooperation with nations like Ecuador.
What’s his stance on the United States’ largest trading partner, Mexico? Rubio did vote in favor of the USMCA in 2020. However, he called former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador “not a good ally,” especially on the topic of combatting drug violence. In an interview with El Universal, he said he would support military action to battle the cartels if Mexico’s government supported the initiative.
Rubio supports Trump’s calls for increased border security and mass deportations, despite once supporting a pathway to citizenship for undocumented migrants.
Confirmation required? Yes
Cabinet level? Yes
Hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, who once raised money for Democrats but later became a key donor to Trump, will be nominated to serve as treasury secretary. Bessent has a long career in finance, including working at Soros Fund Management and founding his own firm.
As treasury secretary, Bessent would implement any tariffs or sanctions undertaken by the Trump administration. The Treasury also manages the United States’ global financial obligations and coordination with the G7 and G20.
Bessent supports tariffs, calling them a “means to finally stand up for Americans.” In an op-ed in Fox News, he highlighted the use of tariffs as a foreign policy tool to push for cooperation on blocking illegal immigration or battling fentanyl trafficking.
Trump touted that Bessent will help maintain the use of the U.S. dollar as the "reserve currency of the world,” In 2023, over 90 percent of Latin America’s foreign reserves were held in dollars.
One returning member of the Trump administration will be Jamieson Greer, who served as the chief of staff to Trump’s previous U.S. trade representative, Robert Lighthizer. Greer, who is now nominated for his former boss's role, will helm the department that steers the U.S. trade policy, including negotiating trade deals.
Under Lighthizer, Greer was integral to the renegotiation of USMCA, as well as the imposition of sanctions on China. Greer left the administration in May 2020 to enter a private law practice. There, he advised clients operating in Mexico’s energy sector and aided U.S. manufacturers on navigating USMCA rapid response mechanism. He helped bring the first case under the mechanism against Mexico. He also penned advisory notes on the implementation of the USMCA and appeared on a panel regarded the Mexico and Colombian energy sectors.
At a 2023 congressional hearing Greer was asked about how to strengthen supply chains in the Western Hemisphere. “Take advantage of CAFTA,” he said, noting that the United States gives preferential rates to countries in the trade agreement to compete against Chinese products.
Confirmation Required: Yes
Cabinet Level: No
Two Spanish speakers will helm the State Department if the Senate confirms Christopher Landau to serve as deputy secretary and second-in-command to Rubio. Landau, the former U.S. ambassador to Mexico (2019-2021), grew up partially in Spain and Paraguay. He is the son of George Landau, who served as the U.S ambassador to Chile, Paraguay, and Venezuela, and was president of Americas Society/Council of the Americas from 1985 to 1993.
After a career working as an appellate lawyer and law professor, Christopher Landau was nominated and unanimously confirmed by the Senate to be the United States’ top diplomat in Mexico City in 2019. There, he supported the first Trump administration's efforts to stem immigration, including defending Remain in Mexico, the policy which required asylum seekers to await proceedings in Mexico. He also was involved in efforts to promote USMCA and nearshoring initiatives. The end of Landau’s ambassadorship was marked by efforts to steer U.S.-Mexico cooperation to mitigate the impact of the Covid pandemic.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum celebrated Landau’s nomination, saying “Ambassador Landau did a good job in Mexico, from my point of view. I met him as head of the City Government and he knows our country very well.” U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar also congratulated Landau.
Landau has been a critic of the Biden-Harris administration’s immigration policy and López Obrador’s handling of organized crime groups.
He’s been vocal against the Maduro regime’s fraud in the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election and praised Chilean President Gabriel Boric for his stance on the issue.
Confirmation required? No
Cabinet level? No
Starting his career as a border patrol agent in 1984, Thomas Homan eventually became acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under the first Trump administration (2017–2018). Since 2022, Homan has worked as a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, where he helped author the Project 2025 policy proposals. Now, Homan is set to serve as Trump’s border czar, an ad hoc position with purview over agencies that deal with the United States’ southern and northern borders. Since the 1930s, U.S. presidents have assigned priority policy issues to high-level officials within the executive office who have been formally or informally dubbed “czars.”
In Trump’s first term, Homan was involved with the “zero tolerance” policy introduced in 2018 that prosecuted adults who crossed the border without authorization and detained them apart from their children. Homan justified the policy saying that it would deter other migrant families from attempting perilous journeys that risked their children’s lives. In a 60 Minutes interview aired in October 2024, Homan’s response to whether family separation could be avoided during Trump’s proposed mass deportations was that “families can be deported together.”
Through a nonprofit he founded in October 2023 called the Border911 Foundation, Homan has advocated for greater involvement of local police in immigration enforcement, a function customarily filled by the federal government. Border911 supported Proposition 314, a legislative initiative on the ballot in Arizona during the 2024 U.S. general elections. It would make crossing the border at an unauthorized point of entry a state crime and allow state and local law enforcement to arrest persons on suspicion of having committed this crime.
Now, Homan is charged with carrying out Trump’s campaign promise to deport undocumented immigrants en masse. Homan has promised to “run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen.” When asked during the 60 Minutes interview what a mass deportation exercise would look like on the ground, Homan responded, “It’s not going be a mass sweep of neighborhoods. It’s not going to be building concentration camps,” but rather “targeted arrests” and “workforce enforcement operations” prioritizing migrants deemed a threat to national security or public safety.
Speaking with Donald Trump Jr. on the latter’s podcast, Homan advocated for the return of the “Remain in Mexico” policy that required asylum seekers to await their U.S. immigration court hearings in Mexico.
Confirmation required? Yes
Cabinet level? Yes
Billionaire Howard Lutnick, who is CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, will be Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary, tasked with representing the interests of U.S. businesses. Lutnick, whose company invests in Latin America, has been a vocal supporter of Trump’s tariff proposals, which include a 10 percent tariff on all imports and a 60 percent import on Chinese goods. Lutnick said they should be used as leverage in trade deal negotiations. “Tariffs are an amazing tool for the president to use," the CEO said in September, “We need to protect the American worker.”
On X, Lutnick criticized the joint automotive manufacturing encouraged by USMCA, saying, “We don’t make anything here anymore—even great American cars are made in Mexico.”
Trump suggested that Lutnick will also have oversight of the office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
Confirmation required? No
Cabinet level? No
Trump named Stephen Miller, his former senior adviser and lead speechwriter, as his deputy chief of staff for policy, a role within the White House’s executive office. Miller is one of most visible advocates for Trump's hardline approach to immigration, especially for the 2018 “zero tolerance” policy. During Trump’s first term, Miller was integral to shaping deals with Central American countries that forced asylum seekers to apply for protections in the region rather than in the United States. Miller was also involved in efforts to limit refugees, asylum seekers, and green cards.
“Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown,” Miller told The New York Times in November 2023, speaking for Trump’s campaign about mass deportations.
Miller has also spoken about ending the parole program, enacted under Biden, that has allowed Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans, to temporarily come to the United States if they have a domestic financial sponsor and have been vetted.
Miller vocalized his views on immigrant communities from a young age. At 16 years old, he wrote a letter to a local Santa Monica publication, arguing that school announcements should only be written in English. “When I entered Santa Monica High School in ninth grade, I noticed a number of students lacked basic English skills. There are usually very few, if any, Hispanic students in my honors classes, despite the large number of Hispanic students that attend our school,” he wrote, “Even so, pursuant to district policy, all announcements are written in both Spanish and English. By providing a crutch now, we are preventing Spanish speakers from standing on their own. As politically correct as this may be, it demeans the immigrant population as incompetent, and makes a mockery of the American ideal of personal accomplishment.”
From Title 42 to TPS, learn about major U.S. policies affecting Latin American migrants and asylum seekers.
Confirmation required? Yes
Cabinet level? Yes
Congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York the most senior woman among Republican leadership in the House of Representatives, will be nominated to serve as Trump’s envoy to the United Nations. That will put her in direct contact with Latin American leaders on global issues. The representative’s record on Latin America is limited, though she’s been a vocal critic of the Biden administration’s border policy. It is unknown if, like her predecessor, she will support adding a permanent representative for Latin America on the UN Security Council.
Representing a northern New York district that neighbors Canada, Stefanik has also spoken about the need to allocate more resources to the northern border, claiming an increase in unauthorized crossings. On Canada, Stefanik was outspoken during a trade dispute with the country over dairy market access in USMCA, but supported the agreement when it was signed.
Confirmation required? No
Cabinet level? No
Representative Mike Waltz of Florida has been selected to serve as Trump’s national security advisor. The position, which sits in the executive office, will put the former combat veteran as the president’s top aide on matters relating to geopolitics, terrorism, and the U.S. military.
Waltz, who once served as an advisor to former Vice President Dick Cheney, is considered to be hawkish on foreign policy, including on U.S. actions toward Afghanistan, Iran, and Mexico. On the latter, Waltz introduced unsuccessful legislation in the House to authorize the president to use military force against Mexican drug cartels. This, the congressman proposed, wouldn’t include ground troops but "cyber, drones, intelligence assets, naval assets." Waltz likened the proposal to what the United States undertook under Plan Colombia, an initiative that had the United States provide military, economic, and intelligence aid to help the South American country battle drug cartels and guerrilla groups from 2000 to 2015. “Colombia was once overrun by cartels, but a small team of Green Berets helped their government turn the tide,” Waltz said on X. “We need to bring that playbook to the crisis in Mexico—empower their military, crush the cartels, and secure our border!” Trump has called for Mexican drug cartels to be designated as terrorist organizations.
In 2019, he traveled with nine other congressmen to Argentina, Honduras, and Panama to promote economic and trade ties with the United States. In Congress, he’s also been vocally against the Cuban and Venezuela regimes, calling on the Senate to reject nominees for diplomatic posts who are not sufficiently hard on these governments and increasing sanctions on the Maduro regime.
In November, Waltz met Argentine President Javier Milei in Mar-a-Lago and he praised the leader’s policies on X.
Confirmation required? Yes
Cabinet level? Yes
Two-term South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has been nominated to head the department tasked with executing Trump's headline immigration policies: the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, the reintroduction of the "Remain in Mexico" policy, and ending birthright citizenship for children born to undocumented migrants. The department of homeland security houses both the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and ICE agencies, as well as the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), among other functions.
Noem has been outspoken about what she has characterized as an “invasion” at the U.S.-Mexico border. As governor, Noem supported efforts to increase patrols at the southern border, sending her state’s National Guard troops to Texas multiple times. Earlier this year, she publicized a visit to the Texas border with pictures showing her helping to erect a fence.
These efforts earned the attention of Donald Trump who praised her as being “very strong on Border Security” in his announcement of her nomination and said “she will work closely with Border Czar Tom Homan [to] guarantee that our American Homeland is secure from our adversaries.”
Confirmation required? Yes
Cabinet level? Yes
Trump announced Tulsi Gabbard, former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, as his pick for director of national intelligence, a position that oversees the 18 agencies that make up the United States Intelligence Community. This would make her central to any foreign policy or military decision regarding national security.
Her foreign policy stance is anti-interventionist and isolationist. In 2019, Gabbard said the United States needed to “stay out of Venezuela,” following then President Trump’s recognition of Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s interim president. “Every time the United States, and particularly in Latin America, has gotten involved in regime change, using different tools to enact that regime change, there have been both short and long-term devastating impacts,” she also said in an interview.
