Trump looks to turn attention to Western Hemisphere, at least for a moment, at a regional summit
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Trump has pledged to reassert U.S. dominance in Latin America and push back on what he sees as years of Chinese economic encroachment in America's backyard.
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President Donald Trump is set to gather with Latin American leaders on Saturday at his Miami-area golf club as his administration looks to demonstrate that it's still committed to sharpening the U.S. foreign policy focus on the Western Hemisphere, even as it deals with five-alarm crises around the globe. The gathering, which the White House is calling the "Shield of the Americas" summit, comes just two months after Trump ordered an audacious U.S. military operation to capture Venezuela's then-president, Nicolás Maduro, and whisk him and his wife to the United States to face drug conspiracy charges. Looming even larger is Trump's decision to join with Israel to launch a war on Iran one week ago, a conflict that has left hundreds dead, convulsed global markets and unsettled the broader Middle East. He started Saturday with a social media post warning that more Iranian officials would become targets in the war and that strikes on the country would intensify. "Today Iran will be hit very hard!" Trump said. Trump's time with the Latin American leaders will be limited: He is set to fly to Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, to be on hand for the dignified transfer of the six U.S. troops killed in a drone strike on a command center in Kuwait, one day after the U.S. and Israel launched their military campaign against Iran. But with the summit, Trump will look to turn attention to the Western Hemisphere, at least for a moment. He has pledged to reassert U.S. dominance in the region and push back on what he sees as years of Chinese economic encroachment in America's backyard. "Under previous leaders, we grew obsessed with every other theater and every other border in the world except our own," Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told regional leaders and defense ministers who gathered in Florida this week for talks on countering drug cartels. "These elites reduced our power and presence in this hemisphere, opting for a benign neglect that was anything but benign." Who will be attendin...
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