The new Colombian president wants to repair ties with the US

• Colombia has been Washington’s closest ally for decades.
• Petro wants to renegotiate Colombia’s trade agreements with the US.
• He also wants to end the drug war and shift the nation’s economy away from fossil fuels.

With Gustavo Petro’s victory in Sunday’s presidential elections in Colombia, a new chapter in the nation’s relationship with the US has begun.

The country has been Washington’s closest partner in the area for decades and has never had a left-wing president. However, Petro’s election as the nation’s top official and a leftist rebel might fundamentally alter that relationship.

Petro stated last week that he planned to renegotiate Colombia’s trade agreements with the US in an interview.

In addition, he wants to start a conversation on three key issues: defending the Amazon rainforest, putting an end to the drug war, and shifting Colombia’s economy away from fossil fuels and other extractive industries.

Given their stark differences on subjects like Venezuelan relations, his future discussions with US Vice President Joe Biden are likely to be difficult.

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Petro does support recognising Nicolas Maduro as the country’s president, despite his attempts to separate himself from the totalitarian administration on the campaign path. The White House is adamantly opposed to this.

However, the two presidents might still be able to agree on issues like energy transition and environmental preservation.

And Petro has his own allies in Washington; he told CNN that he interacts “frequently” with US Senator Bernie Sanders and that he personally met with the Progressive Caucus, a group of US legislators with a left-leaning political outlook, earlier this year.

The newest president of Colombia has also expressed a desire to forge a new South American progressive coalition.

Instead of the three authoritarian nations of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, this would probably feature the presidents of Chile and Argentina, Gabriel Boric and Alberto Fernandez.

By excluding those three countries from the Summit of the Americas, a regional conference that was held in Los Angeles in early June, Biden recently provoked criticism among several Latin American leaders. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, president of Mexico, decided to completely skip the ceremony out of sympathy.

Petro, however, told CNN that he would have gone regardless.
Of course, he responded. I would have gone to Biden and told him that it was wrong to not invite some nations, but I would never turn down the chance for dialogue.

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