After Columbia rescinded its offer (mid-flight) to accept deportations, Trump hit the county with a basket of actions.
Trump Acts Against Columbia
The Wall Street Journal reports Trump Says He Will Impose 25% Tariffs on Colombia in Showdown Over Deportation Flights
President Trump said his administration would impose 25% tariffs on Colombian goods coming into the U.S., retaliating against the South American country for rejecting two U.S. flights carrying migrants back home.
The move, which would mark Trump’s first use of tariffs since his inauguration last week, came Sunday after Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s government said he had blocked U.S. flights of deported Colombians. Petro’s decision marked a challenge to Trump’s policy of removing migrants who entered the U.S. illegally, especially criminals.
Trump responded in a post on his Truth Social platform that the 25% tariffs would be raised to 50% in a week. Trump also said he was issuing a travel ban for Colombian government officials and visa sanctions on people connected to the country’s government.
“These measures are just the beginning,” Trump wrote. “We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States!”
The ordeal began early Sunday morning, when the Colombian president said on his X account that the “U.S. cannot treat Colombian migrants like criminals,” adding: “I disallow the entry of American planes with Colombian migrants to our territory.”
Two U.S. military C-17s had diplomatic permission to land in Colombia when they left San Diego carrying roughly 80 migrants each, a defense official said, but that authority was revoked Sunday en route. The planes then returned to the U.S., the official said.
Hours later, the U.S. responded by closing its visa section at the U.S. Embassy in the Colombian capital, a U.S. official said.
The tariffs and sanctions on Colombia were to be imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the senior administration official said. That law grants the president broad authority to impose duties and penalties on other nations when he declares an economic emergency. The act hasn’t previously been used to impose tariffs, though President Richard Nixon used a precursor to the law to impose 10% tariffs on all imports in 1971.
The U.S. imported $16.1 billion in goods from Colombia in 2023, ranking it 26th—behind Sweden and ahead of Australia—among import partners, according to Census Bureau data. Crude oil accounted for roughly a third of that dollar value. Other top commodities the U.S. receives from Colombia include gold, coffee, bananas and fresh-cut roses.
In 2023, the U.S. accounted for 28% of the value of Colombia’s exports, more than any other trading partner, according to United Nations data.
Later in the morning, Petro said on X that he had ordered the return of the planes, suggesting that had done so because they were military aircraft. “We will receive our countrymen on commercial planes, without them being treated like criminals,” he wrote. Just minutes after Trump said he would impose tariffs, Petro’s office said the government would make the presidential plane available to ferry back the Colombians who were to have been deported Sunday.
The U.S. had been deporting migrants to Colombia and other Latin American countries under the Biden administration, usually using commercial flights, the senior State Department official said. So far in January, there have been 90 deportation flights, with 48 to Guatemala and Honduras, 14 to Mexico and eight to Colombia, said Witness at the Border, a U.S. immigration advocacy group that tracks flight data.
Separately, last week Mexico rejected a U.S. military plane carrying those who had entered the U.S. illegally, a U.S. defense official said.
Cost of Military Transport
According to the Air Force, the C-17 Globemaster III is the most flexible cargo aircraft to enter the airlift force. It is capable of rapid strategic delivery of troops and all types of cargo to main operating bases or directly to forward bases in the deployment area.
According to an AI search, in 2024, the C-17’s hourly rate for contingency flying was $25,044 for the U.S. government.
The average flight time to Columbia is about 5 hours. The average flight time to Venezuela is about 6 hours. Those estimates are for commercial flights, not flights that will have much extra security.
Number of Illegal Venezuelans
FAIR reports Venezuelans Now Rank Second in Illegal Immigration
In total, since President Biden was inaugurated, over half a million Venezuelan aliens have entered the United States, making Venezuelans the second most commonly encountered nationality at the border, second only to Mexicans.
Cost to Deport All Venezuelans
It costs about $700 for a commercial flight to Venezuela. The cost to deport 500,000 Venezuelans by commercial flight would be 500,000 * $700 = $350,000,000.
That’s an affordable $350 million, assuming Venezuela would take them back, but also assuming we used commercial flights, while further assuming security costs nothing.
If we used C-17s at $25,044 per hour, the following calculation applies.
$25,044 per hour * 6 hours * 2 * (500,000 immigrants / 80 people per flight) = $1,878,300,000.
But this assigns nothing to the cost of detaining all 500,000. And it ignores holding costs, the costs of ICE agents, etc.
Cost to Deport 20 million
Many people want to deport 20 million. I doubt there are 20 million (I think it’s more like 15 million).
Fortunately, we will not need military planes, just other military transport. But the same other conditions apply.
We have to round 20 million. Temporarily house them somewhere, safely. Then transport them to the border, and get Mexico to accept them.
How much would that cost, even if Mexico were to agree?
What If We Concentrate on Criminals?
If we do that, we can deport a sensible number of people, perhaps a million or so for which ICE has warrants.
Trump has the right idea to pressure Columbia with visa denials and even tariffs.
In this case, targeted tariffs are logical, likely to work, likely to encourage better practices in other countries, are unlikely to hurt the US economically other than the price of coffee, and are not in violation of any signed US treaty.
The same cannot be said for tariffs on Mexico and Canada where a trade war could prove to be very damaging.
Actions on Mexico and Canada would also be in direct violation of Trump’s personally negotiated USMCA treaty.
Your Cup of Morning Joe Is About to Shock You
Regarding coffee, Javier Blast says “If the US imposes a 25% tariff on all Colombian exports, the already red-hot coffee market is going to get even hotter. Colombia is the world’s top-3 coffee producer (and a key source of premium Arabica beans)”
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