The Orange Drift - How Latin American leaders are responding to Trump
Updating my framework shows more leaders aligning with Trump and no populist opponents remaining.
Last February, I published a chart of how Latin American leaders are responding to Trump. I updated it last April and again in September. This morning, I’ve updated the chart for April 2026. Chart below followed by some notes and analysis. The key takeaway is that there has been a drift toward alignment with Trump among Latin American leaders.
Notes
Technocratic vs populist refers specifically to how the leaders manage their relations with the US and Trump, not whether the leaders are technocratic or populist in general. For example, Sheinbaum sometimes governs as a populist domestically but manages Trump relations through careful technical negotiation, hence ‘technocratic’ on this chart. Despite this caveat, someone will inevitably write me to complain that Lula and Ortega are populists.
This chart is more about the framework for thinking about the region than about being 100% accurate and undebatable. Some of these categorizations are absolutely debatable and fluid. I could imagine putting Lula in the opportunistic category given his recent efforts to mend ties with Trump. Mulino continues to try to be Trump’s best friend, but it is complicated by Trump’s views on the Panama Canal. The point of the chart is to be a starting point for discussion and to look for how it could be interpreted differently or change as events shift globally.
I included Fernandez in Costa Rica even though she’s still a month away from taking office. I didn’t bother with Peru because they will change presidents again soon enough (arguably always true, but especially true with an election this weekend).
Analysis
The Orange Drift. An increasing number of presidents in Latin America have lined up with Trump over the past 16 months. Like the Pink Tide moment of the 2000s, there are plenty of potential criticisms of this concept as a framework. Each country and leader has its own story and motivation. As with the Pink Tide’s Chavez vs Lula debate, there are ways to divide the analysis of countries and leaders that are Trump-aligned, making them not all act as a unit (technocratic vs populist; democratic vs autocratic). It’s a far more complex trend than a single blob of color, and yet, some trend is undeniably happening here that deserves a simple label to start the analysis.
Is Delcy aligned or just opportunistic? Alignment isn’t ideological, though most of the leaders who align with Trump identify themselves as part of the regional right. At least some of Delcy’s alignment is transactional and performative, tempting me to place it in the opportunistic box instead of the aligned box. However, I’ve placed her in the aligned box because it’s hard to point to a leader in Latin America who has been more cooperative with Trump than Venezuela’s.
The Delcyfication. As I wrote a few weeks ago, Noboa is Ecuador’s Delcy and Milei is Argentina’s Delcy. As exemplified by Venezuela’s interim president, Trump likes leaders who act as if they need him. The cost of opposition to Trump has become clear, and the rewards of performed subservience are tangible. Just as important, Trump has leverage over many of these leaders, making the punishment for breaking with him on any issue in the future quite high.
Cuba is next. Once the conflict in the Middle East is done, Trump has promised/threatened to turn his attention toward bringing Cuba into the US fold. Believe him on this. If the conflict with Iran ends well, Trump will feel optimistic in going after his next target. If Iran ends poorly or in some sort of stalemate, Trump will want a new foreign policy win to focus on before the November midterms. Either way, Cuba’s leadership seems to be negotiating with Trump and his team, moving them from opposition to some sort of opportunistic framework for the moment.
There are no populist opponents to Trump remaining. When I wrote this framework out in February 2025, one key point was, “Don’t be in the bottom right corner!” because that is the space where Trump really wants to fight it out. Petro’s attempts at populist opposition to Trump went so poorly that he backed down and met with Trump at the White House to tone down the conflict. One big question for the region is whether that changes again in the coming three years as Trump becomes less popular. It’s possible that Lula may re-enter the populist opposition category if he tries to leverage the US economic pressure against Brazil in the upcoming campaign. Or a new leader may try to run on an anti-Trump platform in a future campaign and find success. There will be reasons for leaders to rethink their positions and perhaps public opinion shifts as well. So while it’s not surprising this box is empty right now, don’t be surprised if it fills back up in the future. Just like the Pink Tide, the Orange Drift is not permanent, and in fact, it has a near certain end date around January 2029.
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