Donald Trump’s policy towards Latin America as an issue of the U.S. political struggle 2020: candidates’ election programs

Introduction. Donald Trump’s policy towards the Latin American region and illegal Latino migrants was often criticized by mass media. Many experts admit that over four years of his presidency U.S. cooperation with Latin American countries was severely “undermined”. This negative trend should have been the subject of discussion of candidates for the U.S. presidential election in 2020. The purpose of the article is to find out what aspects of Trump’s policy towards Latin America were used by the candidates in their campaign statements, for what he was criticized and praised. Methods and materials. The research is based on the analysis of candidates’ election programs and speeches. Donald Trump’s annual messages to Congress are analyzed as well. The author researches the programs of those candidates who reached the final stage of the 2020 elections and those who were most popular at the beginning of 2020 but lost the primaries. In addition to general scientific research methods, the author uses methods of discourse analysis and comparative analysis. Analysis. Almost all the candidates criticized the policy of Donald Trump in different way. The main issues were President’s approaches to Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela and dealing with illegal immigrants. Trump’s policy didn’t receive explicit approval from any candidate. Among all the contenders for the post of U.S. President, only Joe Biden offered a more or less developed plan for establishing relations with the Central America countries. Results. The author showers that main directions of Trump’s policy towards Latin America were not criticized. But the methods of this policy were criticized a lot. Most part of the Latin America region generally fell out of the U.S. foreign policy discourse. And it was almost not represented in the candidates programs and speeches. This suggests that real shifts in the Latin American direction of the U.S. foreign policy will not occur in the coming years