President Donald Trump said he is slapping an emergency 25 percent tariff on all goods imported from Colombia on Sunday after the country’s president turned away two U.S. military aircraft full of detained Colombian migrants.
Sunday’s action could be the first legal test of Trump’s threat to impose sweeping tariffs on trading partners, which he likely has power to do under emergency authorities. He did not specify the legal basis for the tariffs.
The punitive duties, which Trump announced in a social media post, would increase to 50 percent in a week as the U.S. president ignites another fight with a foreign leader over his tariff and immigration policies.
U.S. military aircraft were denied landing in Colombia early Sunday after Colombian President Gustavo Petro said his government wouldn’t accept flights carrying migrants deported from the United States.
The two C-17 aircraft left the U.S. with the expectation that they had the permission to land in Columbia, but rerouted to the U.S. once landing permission was denied, according to a defense official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic.
Petro made the announcement in a pair of X posts, writing that “a migrant is not a criminal and must be treated with the dignity that a human being deserves. That is why I returned the U.S. military planes that were carrying Colombian migrants.”
The denial of the two flights comes as the Pentagon is sending troops to the southern U.S. border and readies transport planes to begin flying over 5,000 detained migrants to their home countries.
The efforts are being undertaken as part of Trump’s sweeping immigration and border control executive orders, which have seen 1,500 soldiers and Marines rushed to the border with Mexico, with the potential for thousands more on the way in the coming weeks.
Last week, two flights landed in Guatemala without incident, but one slated to fly to Mexico was similarly denied permits to land.
The tariffs represent a dramatic shift in the relationship between the U.S. and Colombia, which have a free trade agreement that removes duties on the majority of goods. As of 2022, more than a quarter of the Latin American country’s exports went to the U.S., according to World Bank data.
Trump’s move could trigger legal challenges under the trade deal, although the agreement gives both governments leeway to take action if they deem it necessary to protect “essential security.”
