(AP Photo/Ivan Valencia)
President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on Colombian President Gustavo Petro late Friday, following his accusations that the leftist leader has enabled the country’s booming narcotics trade.
The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced on Friday that Petro and Interior Minister Armando Benedetti were among four officials added to its “specially designated nationals list,” freezing their U.S. assets and prohibiting Americans from conducting business with them.
Within the hour Colombia’s president snapped back on X, vowing to fight the sanctions and lamenting that they’d come “from the government of the society we helped so much to curb their cocaine consumption.”
“A complete paradox, but not a step back and never on our knees,” he added.
The move came days after Trump branded Petro an “illegal drug leader,” and “low rated and very unpopular leader, with a fresh mouth towards America,” as well as claimed his government had “allowed narcotics trafficking to flourish.”
The two leaders have increasingly clashed as Trump’s renewed “war on drugs” intensifies. Trump has
Earlier this month, Petro accused the U.S. of the “murder” of an innocent fisherman during a September 15 strike on what the Trump administration said was a drug-running vessel off Colombia’s coast.