![Then-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, right, speaks with Jimmy Morales, Guatemala’s president-elect at the time, in Guatemala City, Jan. 14, 2016 (AP photo by Moises Castillo).](https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/l_us-biden_latin_america-10072020-1.jpg?w=519&h=259&crop=1)
From the start of the 2016 election campaign, it was all too clear that a Donald Trump presidency would bring dramatic and destabilizing changes to U.S. foreign policy, especially in Latin America. Candidate Trump publicly pummeled the region, fulminating about “rapists” and drug traffickers crossing from Mexico, and vowing to build a wall to keep Central American migrants from “invading” the United States. The rhetoric was jarring in itself, but it was even more startling because it represented such a sharp departure from President Barack Obama’s administration, when even the most critical measures or sanctions came wrapped in diplomatic language. […]