As the United States escalates its military campaign against drug traffickers near Venezuelan waters, destroying a vessel that officials said carried drugs, the Trump administration is simultaneously weighing whether to cut aid to Colombia, the world’s top cocaine producer.
For more than four decades, Colombia has been a cornerstone of U.S. counternarcotics strategy abroad, receiving billions in aid while providing intelligence on routes, networks and shipments.
Now that partnership is under threat.
At issue is a process called certification, an annual review with results expected to be announced on Monday about whether Colombia is doing enough to combat drugs.
While it is unknown what the Trump administration will do, decertification could have huge consequences, suspending hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, prompting sanctions and visa restrictions on government officials, and damaging one of Washington’s closest alliances in Latin America.
The U.S. State Department declined to comment on the administration’s plans.
But in recent months, Trump officials have been vocal in their criticism of Colombia for failing to reduce cultivation of coca, the raw material for cocaine.
“It is time to see results,” the U.S. State Department’s international narcotics agency posted on X. “Given record coca cultivation, there needs to be immediate and tangible progress on eradication.”
Production is at record levels, according to United Nations data. Coca cultivation grew 10 percent to 625,000 acres between 2022 and 2023, while potential production — the U.N.’s estimate of the maximum amount of cocaine that could be produced from coca crops — surged over those two same years by 53 percent, to 2,644 metric tons.
Most Colombian cocaine ends up in the United States and Europe.
Slashing aid, experts say, would undercut the Trump administration’s efforts to keep drugs out of the United States by crippling Colombia’s fight against criminal groups driving the cocaine trade. The Trump administration has promised to take a tougher line on drugs, suggesting that the sinking of the boat near Venezuela was not the end of its campaign.
Mr. Trump has also clashed with Colombia’s leftist president, Gustavo Petro, over migration and drugs. After Colombia blocked deportation flights early this year, Mr. Trump threatened tariffs, prompting Mr. Petro to back down.
Over the years, the United States has at times threatened to suspend aid and take other measures, citing Colombia’s inability to meet coca reduction targets. The U.S. has cut off aid in some years, the last time in 1997.
This time, analysts say, Mr. Trump may follow through.
“This is an administration that’s interested in appearing strong and making a point when there’s governments in the region that they dislike,” said Geoff Ramsey, a senior fellow for Venezuela at the Atlantic Council, a Washington research institute.
Colombia is the largest recipient of U.S. military spending in Latin America, and Colombian officials warn that decertification would hurt both countries.
“A hypothetical decertification would be highly unfair, would definitely hurt Colombia, would also hurt the United States, and at the end of the day would only benefit the drug traffickers,” said Daniel García-Peña, Colombia’s ambassador in Washington, in a telephone interview.
Colombia’s defense minister, Pedro Sánchez, defended Colombia’s antidrug efforts, providing data showing improvements in the country’s antidrug campaign.
From Jan. 1 to early September compared with the same period last year, seizures of cocaine were up 8 percent and the number of drug labs destroyed up by 21 percent. Additionally, 3,200 members of criminal groups were captured or killed — a 17 percent increase.
Many Colombian soldiers and police officers have died in drug operations, Mr. Sánchez added.
“We believe that we have done everything necessary and everything within our power,” said Mr. Sánchez in an interview in his office in Bogotá. “If there is anyone with an iron will to combat drug trafficking, it is Colombia.”
He acknowledged the surge in coca cultivation, but said it was leveling off, though recent official figures were not yet available.
He said the cultivation spike was a result of criminal groups’ expanding operations during Mr. Petro’s “total peace” plan, when many military actions were suspended during negotiations with armed groups. As talks faltered, the groups planted more coca and consolidated control of trafficking routes.
Since his 2022 election, Mr. Petro has shifted the country’s antidrug focus to targeting trafficking networks rather than destroying coca crops.
Eradication, he argues, is ineffective and punishes poor farmers for whom growing coca is their only source of income.
But U.S. and U.N. officials say that shift has partly fueled cocaine production.
Still, Colombian officials and experts say, Colombia cannot take all the blame because global demand is also soaring.
With so much illicit profit to be made, the drug industry has proved resilient, despite billions of dollars spent by the United States over recent decades to dismantle the trade.
“As long as European countries, the United States and Australia continue to see growth in cocaine consumption, it will be very difficult to reduce supply,” Mr. Sánchez said.
The United States and Colombia, Mr. Sánchez said, rely on each other to exchange information to help interdict cocaine shipments on the seas and track the movements of top traffickers inside Colombia. Colombia has extradited many of them to the United States, while American helicopters support Colombian antidrug operations.
For instance, if a cocaine shipment leaves Colombia, U.S. and Colombian intelligence officials might share information, Mr. Sánchez said. Colombia may track the vessel by air and pass its location to the U.S. Navy, leading to a joint interception.
The Trump administration may ultimately take a middle path toward Colombia: decertify, but grant national security waivers to preserve key aid programs.
Mr. Ramsey called that the likeliest outcome, saying President Trump will not want to jeopardize ties ahead of Colombian elections next year should a candidate more closely aligned with him win the presidency.
“This is a decades-long relationship, and the last thing the U.S. wants to do is make it impossible to turn the switch back on,” Mr. Ramsey said. “But I expect them to make it as painful as possible for the Petro government itself.”
Colombian officials have spent months lobbying Washington, meeting with U.S. officials and with a bipartisan congressional staff delegation that traveled to Colombia last month led by Mr. Ramsey.
“I’ve heard a lot in this visit about possible scenarios for decertification,” Mr. Ramsey said. “And I think the Colombian government is prepared for all of them.”
Genevieve Glatsky is a reporter for The Times, based in Bogotá, Colombia.
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