Trump-Petro updates: US, Colombia leaders meet at White House amid tensions

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To learn more about President Gustavo Petro’s approach to eliminating coca crops in Colombia, read our reporting here.

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We will be closing the live page soon. Here’s a brief review of today’s main developments:

• Colombian President Gustavo Petro met with his US counterpart, Donald Trump, at the White House in what they described as a productive and cordial meeting, following months of mutual criticism and threats of possible US military action against Colombia.
• Petro said he and Trump maintain different views about how to address drug trafficking, with Trump pushing for a militarised approach, and Petro stressing the need for a strategy that is “intelligent” and “effective”.
• The White House said US forces in the Arabian Sea shot down an Iranian drone believed to be heading in the direction of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln.
• Regional powers have urged calm as the Trump administration threatens war against Iran in the absence of concessions to a series of US demands.
• Trump signed a funding bill that will end a partial government shutdown, keeping most federal activities funded through late September.
• The shutdown bill, which passed the House earlier in the day, sidesteps a potential confrontation over the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration raids. Prominent Democrats had threatened to withhold their votes to force reforms to the conduct and policies of federal immigration agents.

In October, the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) placed sanctions on Petro, accusing him of “flooding the United States” with drugs.

At today’s news conference, reporters asked Petro: Did you seek to get the sanctions lifted?

Petro replied in the negative. “I did not get elected to see if things would go better or worse for me as an individual,” he said.

The Colombian president then explained that he and Trump avoided any “personal” topics.

“He didn’t talk to me about his businesses. I didn’t talk to him about my businesses. I have none,” Petro said. “But I did invite him to Cartagena. I told it is a very nice and beautiful place to be and to live.”

Petro also underscored that he and Trump have “different ways of thinking” and different approaches to power.

“He didn’t change his way of thinking. Neither did I. But how do you do an agreement, a pact? It’s not as between twin brothers. It’s between opponents,” Petro said.

During his news conference, Petro referred repeatedly to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

At one point, he reflected on his appearance at the UN General Assembly in September, when he took to the streets to join protesters denouncing Israel’s attacks on the Palestinian territory.

Petro described the situation at the time as a question of “dollars and missiles”. But then, he said, “In a matter of days, that changed”.

He argued that the tenuous “ceasefire” that took hold in October illustrated how quickly the world can change.

“Of course, we have a lot to discuss about what’s happening now in Gaza. The solution is not there, but no longer is there this rain of bombs that there was before,” Petro said.

“I’m not going to get into this in depth, because it was not a topic of the conversation. But it shows the world can change in a matter of days.”

The Trump administration has criticised Petro for not taking “aggressive” actions to stop cocaine trafficking out of Colombia.

But Petro used his podium at the Colombian Embassy to once again defend his record, saying no leader had done more to seize cocaine and extradite drug traffickers.

He also touted his voluntary coca eradication programme, saying his push had succeeded in “getting thousands of peasant farmers to uproot the plant themselves”.

Petro added that the voluntary programme, which works with rural farmers, was both more humane and more effective than military-led efforts.

“These are two different methods, two different ways of understanding how to fight drug trafficking,” Petro said. “One that is brutal and self-interested, and what it ends up doing is promoting mafia powers and drug traffickers, and another approach, which is intelligent, which is effective.”

Petro added that he encouraged Trump to focus on dismantling the highest level of the drug trade, rather than attacking low-level couriers and farmers.

“I told President Trump, if you want an ally in fighting drug trafficking, it’s going after the top kingpins,” he said.

The Colombian leader told reporters that “one cannot act under blackmail” in response to a question of whether he had discussed US sanctions targeting him, calling his encounter with Trump a meeting “between equals”.

“A meeting between equals who, yes, think differently, with different powers, obviously, but capable of finding common ground,” he said.

He added that a “path of liberty” would form the basis of true solutions to the problems faced by Colombia and the US.

Since taking office, the left-wing Petro has turned away from the forced eradication of coca crops in Colombia, arguing that heavy-handed measures will only serve to penalise impoverished rural farmers.

He returned to this theme during his news conference at the Colombian Embassy in Washington, DC.

Petro argued that, for some farmers, there is little economic alternative to coca farming.

“If the people aren’t able to feed themselves, then they have no other options in the jungles, the mountains, and elsewhere where there’s no highway for transport, where it takes 12 hours to get a legal agricultural product to market,” he said. “They turn to drug trafficking.”

The president also argued that there was a widespread belief that the drug “kingpins” who traffic in narcotics are solely “those who have uniforms and rifles in Colombia”.

Instead, Petro said the world needed to look beyond Colombia’s borders to understand what was fuelling the drug trade. “ The first tier of drug trafficking”, he argued, “live in Dubai, in Madrid, in Miami”.

Trump is well known for keeping a supply room in the White House full of branded merchandise, including red baseball caps emblazoned with his slogan, Make America Great Again.

At a news conference, Petro explained that he had received a cap as a welcome gift, but he told journalists that he made an amendment to it.

“He gave me a red cap, a MAGA cap. It says, ‘Make America Great Again’,” Petro said, explaining that he then grabbed a pen from the president’s collection.

“I wrote an S at the end of America: ‘Make Americas.’ And that can be done on the basis of mutual respect between two different civilisations, because Latin America is a diverse civilisation itself.”

While Petro acknowledged his disputes with Trump, he also emphasised that Tuesday’s meeting was a step towards de-escalation.

“So, I think it’s a small step, but it eases tensions, and it limits the possibility of a big war right in the heart of the world,” Petro said, in reference to his region.

In his remarks to journalists at the Colombian Embassy in Washington, DC, Petro described his meeting with Trump as a positive development.

However, he acknowledged that the meeting had unfolded “at a moment of profound tension between the United States and Latin America in general”, and he traced that tension to the US military buildup and attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

Petro described the Caribbean region as a “sea of peace” with a conflicted history.

“It’s a crossroads of cultures. It has seen a conquest happen. It has seen invasions and revolutions,” Petro said.

He went on to compare the Caribbean – and Colombia itself – with the “centre of the world”, noting that it lies between the northern and southern hemispheres.

“We are not just some distant land apart from the rest of civilisation where not much happens, but we’re really in the eye of a hurricane,” Petro said.

The Colombian president said his meeting with Trump today was “positive”, a marked departure after months of trading insults with the US president.

“My impression of the meeting a few hours ago is, first and foremost, that it was positive,” Petro said.

As he signed into law a budget bill in the Oval Office, Trump reflected on his meeting with his Colombian counterpart, Petro.

“How was your meeting with Gustavo Petro earlier today? And did you come to any agreement on counter-narcotic efforts?” one reporter asked.

Trump replied in the affirmative:  ”Yeah, we did. We worked on it, and we got along very well.”

The right-wing president then acknowledged that his relationship with Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing leader, had gotten off to an icy start.

“You know, he and I weren’t exactly the best of friends, but I wasn’t insulted, because I’d never met him. I didn’t know him at all. And we got along very well,” he said.

“And we’re working on that,” Trump continued, switching his focus to joint drug-trafficking efforts. “We’re working on some other things too, including sanctions, and we had a very good meeting. I thought it was terrific.”

Less than four months remain until Colombia holds its next presidential election on May 31.

Petro, the country’s first left-wing leader, will not be on the ballot: Colombian law prevents him from running for a consecutive term.

But the country’s left-wing coalition, the Historic Pact, will be represented by Ivan Cepeda, who has served in the Senate since 2014.

Cepeda is well known in Colombia for his conflict with former right-wing President Alvaro Uribe, whom he accused of having violent paramilitary ties. Uribe has denied the allegations.

Colombia’s right wing, however, is seeking to end the left’s control of the presidency.

Abelardo de la Espriella, a far-right candidate, has taken the lead in pre-election polling.

A survey published in La Semana magazine and compiled by AtlasIntel found that De la Espriella was leading Cepeda, 28 percent to 26.5 percent.

Trump has sought to influence Latin American elections over the past year, even threatening to withhold aid from countries that fail to vote for right-wing candidates. It is unclear how today’s meeting, and the warming relations with Petro, might affect the Trump administration’s approach to May’s election.

After a nearly two-hour meeting at the White House, Colombian President Gustavo Petro is beginning his remarks at the Colombian Embassy in Washington, DC.

He is expected to update the media about his Oval Office meeting with Trump, including discussions they had about joint efforts to combat drug trafficking.

Tuesday marks the first face-to-face meeting in Washington between the two leaders.

In a social media post after his White House meeting, Petro shared a photo of what looks to be a signed copy of Trump’s book, The Art of the Deal, apparently gifted to him by his US counterpart.

The book was signed with a note from Trump to Petro: “You are great.”

“What did Trump mean to say to me in this dedication?” Petro quipped in Spanish in his social media post. “I don’t understand English very well.”

Prior to a detente in January, the two leaders had been in a public feud with one another.

¿Qué me quiso decir Trump en esta dedicatoria?
No entiendo mucho el inglés pic.twitter.com/biNGKcVBu2

— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) February 3, 2026

While Petro has left the White House today in seemingly upbeat spirits, his relationship with Trump had started on a distinctly sour note.

Six days after Trump began his second term, on January 26, 2025, a feud between the two leaders broke out over social media.

News reports had emerged that the Trump administration was shackling immigrants as they were boarded onto military-led deportation flights, and Petro, an avid social media user, took to X to voice his disapproval.

“The US cannot treat Colombian migrants as criminals,” Petro wrote. “I disallow the entry of US planes carrying Colombian migrants into our territory.”

Trump, an equally avid social media user, quickly responded, threatening to impose steep tariffs on Colombia if Petro did not relent and allow the deportation flights to enter Colombian territory.

“Petro’s denial of these flights has jeopardized the National Security and Public Safety of the United States,” Trump wrote on social media.

Petro ultimately agreed to allow the flights to land, but that initial confrontation set the tone for a bitter relationship between the two leaders over the past year. Yet, in recent weeks, Petro and Trump have signalled they have warmed to one another, speaking over the phone in January and meeting today for the first time in person.

Former US President Bill Clinton and former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will testify this month as part of a congressional probe into the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The announcement comes after the Clintons, two prominent Democratic politicians, initially refused to testify before the Republican-led House Oversight Committee.

Bill Clinton will appear before the committee on February 27, and Hillary Clinton, who ran against Trump in the 2016 presidential race, will appear on February 26.

The House Oversight Committee had threatened to charge the couple with contempt of Congress for refusing the summons. A vote to hold them in contempt has been put on hold for now.

“We look forward to questioning the Clintons as part of our investigation into the horrific crimes of Epstein and [Ghislaine] Maxwell, to deliver transparency and accountability for the American people and for survivors,” Republican James Comer said in a statement.

Trump has been scrutinised for his past relationship with Epstein, who was accused of leading a sex-trafficking ring. Hundreds of victims have stepped forward in recent years to testify to the scale of Epstein’s crimes.

Despite what the Trump administration has cast as an effort to ease tensions in Minneapolis, locals say immigration enforcement agents have continued to threaten and violate the civil liberties of activists and residents.

The Associated Press reported that immigration agents pointed guns at observers following their vehicles on Tuesday, citing a photographer who witnessed the incident.

Federal agents have been criticised for using aggressive tactics against citizens participating in constitutionally protected activities, including recording and observing immigration activities.

Scrutiny of such tactics was heightened after federal agents shot and killed two US citizens in January: Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s foreign minister, says he met with US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent today.

In a post on X, Jaishankar ‌said they “had a useful discussion ‌on ‌advancement of ⁠India-US economic partnership ‌and strategic cooperation”.

The statement comes after Trump announced yesterday that a “trade deal” had been reached to reduce US tariffs on Indian goods from 50 to 18 percent, following New Delhi’s agreement to stop buying Russian oil.

But India has been less clear about the details of such a deal, and whether one was, in fact, reached.

India’s commerce minister, Priyush Goyal, said the agreement was still being finalised, but would be signed “shortly”.

Read more about what we do and don’t know about the agreement here.

The rights group Amnesty International USA has issued an appeal during today’s meeting between Trump and Petro, which focused heavily on countering narcotics trafficking.

Daniel Norona, the group’s Americas advocacy director, said that any efforts to combat conflict, displacement and state abandonment in Latin America “must also confront a hard truth: militarisation is not a public‑security strategy”.

“Any bilateral security cooperation between the countries must not increase the risk of human rights violations being committed by security forces and include enforceable human rights safeguards that prevent impunity, ensure accountability at every level of government, and reinforce the Inter‑American and global human rights systems,” Norona said.

His remarks come as Trump has pressured Petro to pursue a more “aggressive” strategy to combat drug trafficking.

Norona added that both Trump and Petro must confront the “urgent threats facing human rights defenders in Colombia, the rights of people seeking refuge across the Americas, as well as the destabilising impact of the US’s unilateral and unlawful use of force in Venezuela”.