Other nations aren’t beholden to America – but they aren’t entitled to US access or money, either. President Donald Trump is spreading that message loud and clear across the globe. From Mexico to Ukraine, and from South America to South Sudan, he has come up with a handy way to push foreign leaders into playing ball. It’s a simple choice: Do it our way or do without. So far, it seems quite effective.
It’s a Southern Thing?
Having won independence from Sudan in 2011, South Sudan is the newest nation in the world. It’s also the latest foreign government to run afoul of the president’s deportation policies. In 2025, the small African nation has taken a page out of Colombia’s book and is refusing to accept flights of South Sudanese deportees from the states. And, just as it did with Colombia, the Trump administration has a solution.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Saturday that all visas South Sudanese nationals will be revoked, and no new ones will be issued. “Enforcing our nation’s immigration laws is critically important to the national security and public safety of the United States,” the US Department of State said in a statement. “Every country must accept the return of its citizens in a timely manner when another country, including the United States, seeks to remove them.”
The policy may be reevaluated once South Sudan is “in full cooperation,” the statement said.
It wasn’t too long ago that a South American country tried the same thing. As Liberty Nation News Editor-in-Chief Mark Angelides wrote in January, “Colombia made a big show of refusing to accept flights of returning illegal migrants from the United States.” President Gustavo Petro had made a series of X posts demanding deportees be treated with the “dignity that a human being deserves.” Such virtue signaling was clearly just posturing. “Trump was far from amused and immediately put the full power of the executive to work,” Mark reported. “From tariffs to sanctions – surprise, surprise – it worked. By Sunday afternoon, just a couple of hours after Trump’s response, President Petro sent his presidential plane to pick up the deported individuals in Honduras.”
From Mexico to Ukraine, the Dollar Reigns Supreme
Volodymyr Zelensky, president of war-torn Ukraine, came to America in February, ostensibly to sign a deal giving rare earth minerals to the US. The idea was that having American personnel on the ground – even civilians – would secure a ceasefire with Russia simply because Vladimir Putin wouldn’t risk killing them and instigating all out war with an actual superpower.
Instead, he seemed to try to renegotiate the deal at the White House, in front of the press, and he got quite heated in the process. President Trump and VP JD Vance were having none of it. Zelensky left with his proverbial tail between his legs – only to post on X shortly after thanking Trump for the visit and expressing his desire to work with America. Now Ukraine is scheduled to send a team to DC next week for talks on a new mineral deal.
Trump threatened Mexico with increased tariffs if the southern nation didn’t do something to stop the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs into the US. President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo said on social media: “We categorically reject the White House’s slander of the Government of Mexico alleging alliances with criminal organizations, as well as any intention to interfere in our territory.” She went on to say that Mexico doesn’t want fentanyl to reach the US – or anywhere else.
But just a couple of days after this, Mexico lauded a massive fentanyl bust near the border – the largest such bust in the nation’s history, allegedly. As many said at the time – including Trump – if they can do it now, they could have done it before. So why didn’t they?
Trump and the Big Stick
Teddy Roosevelt often said, “speak softly and carry a big stick.” Somewhere along the way, one of America’s presidents sat that big stick down somewhere – leaned up against the wall in a corner or behind a door, perhaps – and too few have been able to find it since. It’s unclear if President Trump found that one or brought his own to the White House, but either way he isn’t afraid to swing it.
The power of the presidency is not to be trifled with. There is, in fact, considerably more he could do – especially with friendly majorities in Congress that wouldn’t try to block his efforts. Let’s go back to Mexico, for example. Back in 2016, Trump talked about building a “big, beautiful wall” between the two nations – but what most found audacious was that he said Mexico would pay for it. That’s a ridiculous idea, America forcing another nation to pay for a border wall, right? Well, maybe not.
In 2023, the US imported about $480 billion in goods from Mexico. That accounted for about 81% of the country’s total exports, but just 12.5% of American imports that year. In fact, the US regularly imports about 80% of Mexico’s total exports, making the market north of the border existentially critical to the southern nation’s economy.
If we take both the raw numbers and the general truth of the situation, then factor in Donald Trump’s comments from his first term and his newer, harder stance on foreign relations from his second term, we get a pair of interesting facts. The US president absolutely could have “made” Mexico pay for the border wall, and Mexico could have actually done it – and still could, in fact.
There are approximately 1,954 miles of shared land border between the two countries, and the border wall costs an estimated $6.5 million per mile to build. The $480 billion Mexico got from the US in 2023 could have walled off the entire boundary line almost 38 times over.
Show of hands: Who, now armed with that knowledge, thinks for one second that a “big, beautiful wall” wouldn’t spring up on the Mexican side of the border in short order should Donald Trump threaten to sufficiently throttle US-Mexico trade to get it done?
