In Davos last month, President Donald Trump offered the world a clear demonstration of peace through strength, reintroducing an unapologetic “America First” agenda to the global stage. The president held NATO members accountable for true burden sharing and reaffirmed U.S. regional security dominance — all part of a “Promises Made, Promises Kept” priority agenda.
This robust American posture isn’t a return to isolationism, as his critics on Capitol Hill or in the liberal media may claim, but a confident reassertion that U.S. leadership matters and that strength yields stability and opportunity for America and people around the world.
Nowhere is this trend more visible than in Latin America, where Trump’s decisive actions this year in Venezuela have reversed years of chaos and created space for a new era of commercial diplomacy that benefits American workers, investors, and defense interests alike.
After years of tyranny under Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration successfully removed a brutal dictator whose regime sold Venezuela’s future to drug cartels and hostile foreign powers. With Maduro in American custody, Venezuela is opening its vast oil sector to international investment — a remarkable shift that underscores the durability of American influence in the Western Hemisphere. This move creates unprecedented opportunities for U.S. energy and oil and gas firms and entrepreneurs to invest in rebuilding a nation rich in resources and business potential.
This emerging model of commercial diplomacy is central to Trump’s foreign policy across the globe. By setting new security and defense standards in Latin America, Washington is not only confronting illicit actors and foreign adversaries but also signaling to private sector business leaders that the region is both a safe and lucrative place to do business.
Success, however, depends on local partners who share Trump’s vision of prosperity and sovereignty. In Panama, for example, recent diplomatic efforts have challenged Beijing’s encroaching influence and realigned a key regional partner with the United States. Following high-level engagement with U.S. leadership, Panama announced it would allow its participation in China’s Belt and Road Initiative to expire — a decision applauded by U.S. officials as reinforcing canal neutrality and strengthening bilateral ties.
Similarly, projects such as a proposed Puerto Barú multimodal corridor exemplify the promise of this new commercial diplomacy approach. Designed to revolutionize energy transfer across, unclog canal traffic, and boost regional infrastructure resilience, the Pharmacy Benefit Managers project stands as a model of modern economic, energy, and environmental strategy.
Fully completed, it will not only improve Panama’s competitiveness and workforce opportunities, but also enhance Western Hemisphere security by reducing reliance on strategic chokepoints vulnerable to foreign influence. Such projects embody the America First approach to foreign policy.
These gains are not automatic, and they depend on host governments’ willingness to embrace good governance and reject influence that is not freedom-based and that undermines their sovereignty. Panama’s leadership now faces a choice: partner with the U.S. and American business leaders on transformational initiatives such as the PBM project that deliver long-term prosperity, or revert to failed approaches that cede leverage over the nation’s leaders to distant powers rather than to the Panamanian people.
Trump is right to press these questions on regional governments and leaders. His America First leadership restores U.S. influence in Panama and across Latin America not through imperial overreach, but by laying the foundation for secure markets, resilient supply chains, and mutually beneficial partnerships. This is what America First foreign policy looks like in practice.
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The world is watching, and Latin America’s future, and the opportunities it holds for U.S. enterprises, hinges on whether governments in the region choose to stand with the U.S. in pursuit of freedom, shared prosperity, and security. If they do, the next chapter of hemispheric cooperation will be one of mutual peace and prosperity, guaranteed by American leadership.
Ambassador Robert C. O’Brien (ret.) was the 27th U.S. national security adviser from 2019-2021 and serves as chairman of State Armor’s Board of Advisers.