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DORAL, FLORIDA — The United States formally unveiled its new Americas Counter Cartel Coalition on Saturday, bringing together a historic alliance of nations committed to eradicating drug trafficking across the Western Hemisphere.
The coalition, which Trump branded the “Shield of the Americas” at a summit held at a golf resort in Florida, includes Argentina, Ecuador, El Salvador, Panama, Paraguay and Peru — countries analysts described as “enthusiastic but useless” — while excluding Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, which together account for the majority of the region’s GDP and, by most measures, the bulk of its institutional knowledge on the subject of cartels.
“The epicenter of cartel violence is Mexico,” Trump told assembled leaders, at an event to which Mexico was not invited. “And I like the president very much,” he added. “Beautiful voice. Beautiful woman. Beautiful voice.” He then attempted to imitate it.
Trump said the coalition’s central commitment was to the use of “lethal military force,” demonstrating this point by mimicking a missile with his hand and making a sound that the White House transcript recorded as “Pew.”
Kristi Noem was appointed Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas, a role the White House described as critical, and which was announced four days after she was terminated from her previous job.
Mexico, for its part, has maintained a separate bilateral security arrangement with Washington, an approach Sheinbaum’s government describes as “sovereign cooperation” and which has already produced the arrest of El Mencho — a result the Shield of the Americas has not yet replicated, having existed for five days.
A State Department spokesperson confirmed the door is “not closed” to Mexico joining the coalition, a statement Mexican officials acknowledged with the measured tone of people who had not been aware the door was open in the first place.
President Sheinbaum, asked about the summit at her morning press conference, noted that Mexico remains committed to its own security strategy, thanked the journalist for the question, and moved on.
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