News Release | Western Hemisphere Initiative

AFPI Announces Launch of Western Hemisphere Initiative

June 3, 2025

Washington, D.C. — Today, the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) launched the Western Hemisphere Initiative, a bold new effort to restore American leadership and preeminence from Greenland to Tierra del Fuego—because protecting the homeland starts with securing our own hemisphere.

With adversarial powers like China, Russia, and Iran expanding their influence across the region, and authoritarian regimes across Latin America working to undermine the will of the people, empower criminal networks, and export anti-American ideologies, the United States faces a clear and growing threat in our own backyard.

AFPI’s new initiative will help fill the leadership vacuum by shaping policy on trade, national security, and beyond. The initiative will be focused on producing hard-hitting research and providing thought leadership centered on the core mission of ensuring that the United States remains the undisputed leading power in the Western Hemisphere.

“What happens in Caracas, Havana, and Mexico City affects American families and American communities,” said Joshua Treviño, Senior Fellow for the Western Hemisphere Initiative. “From mass migration to state-cartel partnerships, to the intrusion of extra-hemispheric powers, we see again and again that we cannot ignore what goes on in the countries closest to us. For the past generation, policymakers in our nation’s capital have done exactly that — and ordinary Americans have paid the price. The Western Hemisphere Initiative aims to restore and reorder our strategic priorities.”

The Western Hemisphere Initiative will reassert American dominance in the region by confronting destabilizing regimes, countering hostile influence, and strengthening American leadership based upon the enduring strategic interests set forth in the Monroe Doctrine (1823) and the Roosevelt Corollary (1904).

“We won’t sit back while China, Russia, Iran, and regional narco-regimes gain ground in our hemisphere. It’s time to take back our region, put America first, and restore our leadership,” said Melissa Ford Maldonado, Director of the Western Hemisphere Initiative. “The AFPI Western Hemisphere Initiative is a declaration that the era of American retreat from involvement in the affairs of our hemisphere is over.”

Both Treviño and Ford come to the AFPI Western Hemisphere Initiative with a robust record of engagement and policy influence on U.S.-Mexico relations, including groundbreaking research and publications on the Mexican state-cartel alliance, designation of Mexican cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and constitutional invasion declarations to defend our southern border.

Recent publications from AFPI’s Western Hemisphere Initiative include: