An Architect of Trump’s Tough Latin America Policies Is Named Envoy

An Architect of Trump’s Tough Latin America Policies Is Named Envoy

A longtime proponent of harsh sanctions, Mauricio Claver-Carone was forced out of his job at the Inter-American Development Bank in 2022.

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By Frances Robles

President-elect Donald J. Trump signaled a return to his first term’s maximum-pressure policies against left-wing regimes on Sunday when he named a longtime foreign policy hawk known for hard-line positions on Cuba to be the special envoy for Latin America.

His choice, Mauricio Claver-Carone, 49, is a lawyer, blogger, lobbyist and former Treasury Department official. Mr. Claver-Carone served as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council during Mr. Trump’s first term.

He left the administration for a prestigious five-year post running the Inter-American Development Bank. But he was fired after two years when allegations emerged that he was in a romantic relationship with a subordinate whose salary he had increased by $133,000 in less than a year, according to a confidential internal investigative report cited by The Associated Press.

Mr. Claver-Carone strongly denied the allegations of an affair.

In being named a special envoy at the State Department, Mr. Claver-Carone could dodge the Senate nomination process, which would dredge up the murky circumstances surrounding his departure from the regional development bank.

The bank, made up of 48 member countries, aims to reduce poverty and develop Latin America; its presidency had always been held by someone from the region.

Mr. Claver-Carone has said he was the victim of a smear campaign by officials in various countries who wanted to force him out after he refused to hire their cronies. He added that the subordinate received a raise when she fought for a higher salary after learning that her predecessor earned significantly more. The bank reached a financial settlement with him and two other employees after they filed complaints in an administrative tribunal, Mr. Claver-Carone told The New York Times on Monday. He declined to comment further.

A spokesman for the bank referred The Times to a statement from 2022 and declined to “disclose further information regarding personnel matters.”

“There’s no region in the world that affects American lives more on a daily basis,” Mr. Claver-Carone wrote in a text message. “From migration, to commerce, to narcotics, President Trump has prioritized dealing with threats and opportunities in the region unlike any other U.S. president in modern history, and his senior team reflects that.”

Mr. Claver-Carone is a familiar face in Latin America policy circles.

In the spring of 2000, Cuban diplomats brawled with protesters outside Cuba’s diplomatic post in Washington, and punched him in the face twice. A law student at the time, Mr. Claver-Carone was among a group of people who had been protesting the possible return of Elián González, a Cuban boy who had been found lost at sea.

Witnesses said that diplomats, furious over the constant stream of insults hurled by protesters, stepped out of their Washington offices one Friday evening and started swinging. The Cubans were eventually kicked out of the country, and five who had already left were criminally charged.

From then on, Mr. Claver-Carone was known as a proponent of the U.S. trade embargo and other tough economic policies aimed at choking off funding to the Cuban government.

As the top White House Latin America adviser during Mr. Trump’s first term, he hatched a policy on Venezuela supporting the leader of Venezuela’s National Assembly and his claim to the presidency. The plan was largely considered a fiasco. The National Assembly leader, Juan Guaidó, ended up leaving the country, and Nicolás Maduro consolidated his hold on power.

In the face of human rights abuses, Mr. Claver-Carone pushed for tough sanctions on Venezuela and Cuba.

“Over the last four years, chaos and anarchy have engulfed our borders. It is time to restore order in our own hemisphere,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media when he announced the selection. “Mauricio knows the region, and how to put America’s interests FIRST. He also knows the dire threats we face from illegal mass migration and fentanyl.”

More recently, Mr. Claver-Carone has been working at a private equity fund, trying to bring Middle East investment to Latin America, Bloomberg reported last week.

Critics argue that the sanctions Mr. Claver-Carone championed helped unleash a wave of migration from those countries.

“His indifference to human suffering and the harshness of sanctions that he was responsible for during his tenure at the White House will raise hackles in Latin America about the wisdom of this appointment,” said Peter Kornbluh, an author of “Back Channel to Cuba,” a history of negotiations between Washington and Havana.

Experts noted that Mr. Claver-Carone’s tenure could be complicated by the fact that most large Latin American countries are governed by leftists.