The United States has established a new “counter cartel coalition” made up of Western Hemisphere nations, but Mexico isn’t part of the group even though U.S. President Donald Trump asserted on Saturday that the country is the “epicenter of cartel violence.”
The Americas Counter Cartel Coalition (ACCC) — also known as the “Shield of the Americas” — was established last Thursday during the Americas Counter Cartel Conference in Miami. Among the coalition partners are the United States, Argentina, Ecuador, El Salvador, Panama, Paraguay and Peru. In addition to Mexico, countries including Colombia, Brazil, Canada and Cuba are not part of the coalition.
At an event on Saturday that the White House called the “Shield of the Americas” summit, Trump signed a proclamation that states that U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth “established the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition, a pledge from military leaders and representatives from 17 countries demonstrating that the region is ready to operationalize hard power to defeat these threats to our security and civilization.”
At the summit, held in Doral, Florida, the U.S. president said that the aim of the coalition is to “eradicate the criminal cartels plaguing our region.”
“And you have a lot of it,” Trump told regional leaders, including President Javier Milei of Argentina, President Daniel Noboa of Ecuador and President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador.
He said that the United States is currently “knocking the hell out of [cartels] where we can, and we’re going to go heavier.”
