As Donald Trump pushes metal tariffs, Latin America builds its own wall

Trump's policies and disparaging remarks about immigrants have forced other countries to help each other out and look for alternatives among themselves

Latin American leaders braced for the worst last year as they watched President Trump take office, with his vows to protect Americans “from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs.”  Then something remarkable happened.

Governments across the hemisphere began forging closer commercial ties with one another and paring back some of their own protectionist policies, embarking on a course reminiscent of what the United States itself had proposed in the 1990s but which failed to materialise: a free trade area reaching from Canada to Chile.

Washington’s protectionist stance comes as