Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa on Wednesday announced 30 percent tariffs on imports from Colombia, accusing its neighbor of failing to help fight drug cartels.
The move echoed US President Donald Trump’s tariff hike on Canada and China — and threatened increases on Mexico — which he partly attributed to concerns over fentanyl trafficking into the United States.
Noboa, a staunch Trump ally who is fighting a surge in violence linked to his country’s ballooning role in the global cocaine trade, said the tariffs would take effect on February 1.
Writing on X, the right-wing leader said: “We have made genuine efforts to cooperate with Colombia, even with a trade deficit exceeding $1 billion annually.”
But Ecuador’s military “continues to face criminal groups tied to drug trafficking on the border (with Colombia) without any cooperation whatsoever,” he added.
Noboa, who on Wednesday was attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said the tariffs would remain in place “until there is a real commitment to jointly combat drug trafficking and illegal mining on the border, with the same seriousness and resolve that Ecuador is demonstrating today.”
A murder every hour
In Quito, Interior Minister John Reimberg told reporters that Colombian authorities “are not taking the right measures to prevent the cultivation, processing, and shipment” of drugs across the border to Ecuador.
Colombia’s left-wing President Gustavo Petro has crossed swords with Trump over US attacks on suspected Latin American drug boats and migrant deportations.
Petro vowed a fuller response, but posted to X Wednesday to say “more than 200 tons of cocaine” have been seized on the border with Ecuador.
His defense minister Pedro Sanchez insisted that Bogota and Quito maintained “close and historic cooperation against drug trafficking,” he wrote in a post on X.
Ecuador has gone from being one of South America’s safest countries to a major cocaine trafficking hub in the space of a few years, plagued by gangs with ties to Mexican and Colombian cartels.
It closed 2025 with a rate of 52 homicides per 100,000 residents — one every hour, according to the Geneva-based Organized Crime Observatory.
Its 600-kilometer (370-mile) border with Colombia, which stretches from the Pacific Ocean to the Amazon jungle, is porous and riddled with countless illegal crossings used to smuggle contraband.
Noboa advanced the idea of allowing the United States and other foreign powers to have military bases in the country — but the proposal was overwhelmingly rejected in a November referendum.
In the aftermath of the vote, the United States announced a temporary deployment of Air Force personnel to the Andean country to fight narcotics smuggling.
