# A Major Earthquake Challenges Colombia’s New Right-Wing President

An episode of [Big Take](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1578096201), 13 Aug 2026, 18 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/UVBrz8bN8aM2Xe47PEPu/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/825d4e29-b616-46f4-afd7-ae2b0013005c/21de274e-239f-4247-8118-b4a501607c2f/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=8b1dd624-a026-43e9-8b57-ae2b00130066

The 7.4-magnitude earthquake that devastated Colombia this week was also an immediate test for the country’s new Trump-aligned president. Abelardo de la Espriella, who campaigned on slashing Colombia's deficit and cracking down on armed rebel groups, now faces the prospect of stalling coffee shipments and a costly relief effort, in his first week in office. On today’s Big Take podcast, host David Gura talks to Bloomberg’s Oscar Medina in Bogotá, Colombia, and Travis Waldron in Brasília, Brazil, about what this moment could mean for a divided Colombia — and for Latin America’s tilt to the right. Read more: • ‘Waiting for Any Sign of Life’: Colombia Reels After Quake • Colombia Quake Toll Tops 260, Prompting Economic Emergency • Colombia Earthquake Pressures President Right From the Get-Go We have a special Bloomberg subscription offer for podcast listeners at Bloomberg.com/podcastoffer. Hosted by David Gura; Produced by Rachael Lewis-Krisky and Victor Swezey; Reported by Travis Waldron and Oscar Medina; Edited by Jeffrey Grocott. Fact-checking by Laura Newcombe and Brunella Tipismana Urbano; Engineering by Emma Munger. Senior Producer: Naomi Shavin; Deputy Executive Producer: Julia Weaver. Executive Producer: Nicole Beemsterboer. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:02] Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
[0:09] Speaker 2: The race to find survivors of a seven point four
[0:11] Speaker 2: magnitude earthquake continues across western Colombia. Rescue workers called for
[0:16] Speaker 2: silence as they picked through rubble, listening for signs of life.
[0:20] Speaker 2: Hundreds of people are dead and thousands more are injured
[0:23] Speaker 2: or missing.
[0:24] Speaker 3: The problem is not just a physical damage.
[0:27] Speaker 2: Bloomberg's Oscar Medina is based in Bogata.
[0:30] Speaker 3: We don't really understand the magnitude of the impact because
[0:35] Speaker 3: a lot of roads are blocked. There is no phone
[0:39] Speaker 3: or internet signal.
[0:41] Speaker 2: Oscar says rescue efforts have varied from one state to another,
[0:44] Speaker 2: and they've been complicated by difficult terrain, limited power and
[0:48] Speaker 2: internet infrastructure, years of poverty, and civil conflict in the
[0:52] Speaker 2: hardest hit areas, Choco, the epicenter of the quake, is
[0:56] Speaker 2: one of the poorest states in the country.
[0:58] Speaker 3: Some people have to sleep outside their homes because their
[1:02] Speaker 3: houses are destroyed. So that's a challenge for the government
[1:08] Speaker 3: because they have to find waste finance, food, shelter, rescue,
[1:13] Speaker 3: temporary housing.
[1:16] Speaker 2: The task of overseeing all of that falls to Columbia's President,
[1:19] Speaker 2: Abolardo de la Espriea. Someone who hadn't held public office before.
[1:24] Speaker 2: The earthquake happened just after he was inaugurated. I mean,
[1:27] Speaker 2: Monday was the first business day of his presidency. Travis
[1:33] Speaker 2: Waldron helps ed ait Bloomberg's coverage of Latin America from Brazilia.
[1:36] Speaker 4: And at seven point thirty in the morning, there's this
[1:41] Speaker 4: massive earthquake that demands all of his attention.
[1:44] Speaker 2: Day la Espriea, a right wing candidate who ran on
[1:47] Speaker 2: an austerity platform, had promised to cut as much as
[1:50] Speaker 2: forty percent of Columbia's budget, but this national tragedy threatens
[1:54] Speaker 2: to upend his plans for the country.
[1:56] Speaker 4: There's a real chance for substantial impact here, and you know,
[2:00] Speaker 4: we'll have to see in the coming days what it
[2:02] Speaker 4: proves to be.
[2:09] Speaker 2: I'm David Gera and this is the big take from
[2:11] Speaker 2: Bloomberg News Today. On the show, Columbia grapples with the
[2:14] Speaker 2: fallout from a major disaster during its new president's first
[2:18] Speaker 2: week on the job. When a massive earthquake struck Columbia
[2:29] Speaker 2: on Monday, it hit one of the country's main economic engines,
[2:33] Speaker 2: one of its lucrative coffee growing regions. It's a multi
[2:36] Speaker 2: billion dollar industry which exports roughly a million sixty kilogram
[2:40] Speaker 2: bags of coffee every month. Bloomberg's Oscar Medina says the
[2:44] Speaker 2: earthquake caused significant damage and shut down the Buenaventura Port.
[2:48] Speaker 2: It started restoring some of its operations on Thursday.
[2:51] Speaker 3: We spoke to the head of a coffee exporter organization
[2:56] Speaker 3: that said that actually exports are largely halted. So we
[3:01] Speaker 3: don't have estimates yet about the economic costs. But in
[3:06] Speaker 3: nineteen ninety nine there was a similar earthquake. That earthquake
[3:12] Speaker 3: had an economic impact of two point two percentage points
[3:17] Speaker 3: of DDP. So if we bring that to today's prices,
[3:22] Speaker 3: that could be something more than ten billion dollars.
[3:27] Speaker 2: And ask her if that wasn't complicated enough. Columbia has
[3:30] Speaker 2: this new president who is now in charge of overseeing
[3:32] Speaker 2: the rescue and recovery efforts. What's his background?
[3:35] Speaker 3: Alerdo Espridia was a trial lawyer and he was a businessman,
[3:42] Speaker 3: and nobody thought he was going to make it to
[3:45] Speaker 3: the presidency because he's an outsider in Columbian politics. He
[3:49] Speaker 3: hasn't held any public office. I mean, he's a showman.
[3:54] Speaker 3: He used to be like a political commentator that he
[3:57] Speaker 3: was controversial one of the most infl some things of
[4:00] Speaker 3: the campaign. He saw himself as the tiger the it's
[4:07] Speaker 3: funny degree, I mean, like with the Tiger's law, we're
[4:12] Speaker 3: gonna destroy the left. And when he won and he
[4:17] Speaker 3: beat the ally of former president gustav Pedro, who was
[4:21] Speaker 3: very strong at the moment, that was a complete surprise
[4:24] Speaker 3: and he pledged to break ties of traditional politics and
[4:30] Speaker 3: political parties.
[4:33] Speaker 2: During his inauguration address, he said, quote, the time for
[4:36] Speaker 2: restoring order, authority and freedom has begun. What did he
[4:40] Speaker 2: mean by that?
[4:41] Speaker 3: Former President Petro had a policy of negotiating with armed groups,
[4:47] Speaker 3: so you wouldn't see like large military operations against criminal
[4:53] Speaker 3: groups or guerrilla organizations. And that was one of the
[5:00] Speaker 3: biggest promises of President and Australia that he was going
[5:03] Speaker 3: to end those peace processes and would use the force
[5:08] Speaker 3: of the state. And actually on Monday there were some
[5:13] Speaker 3: news about some terms of an illegal group, the eln
[5:17] Speaker 3: that's Columbia's all this guerrilla It was won by the army.
[5:23] Speaker 3: So that's his tough line on security.
[5:27] Speaker 2: You mentioned Colombia's former president Gustavo Petro, he was a
[5:30] Speaker 2: left wing president. How big a shift is the span
[5:33] Speaker 2: from Petro to day la Espriea.
[5:36] Speaker 3: The last Peas victory was very narrow. None of the
[5:40] Speaker 3: candidates even got to fifty percent. The difference was just
[5:44] Speaker 3: like less than one percentage point, so the country is
[5:48] Speaker 3: very divided. He managed to create an alliance with traditional
[5:54] Speaker 3: political parties to create a majority in both the Senate
[5:59] Speaker 3: and the our House. But while he has a majority
[6:03] Speaker 3: in Congress today, it's not undisputed.
[6:07] Speaker 2: Travis, I want to turn back to Columbia's economy. What
[6:10] Speaker 2: kind of economic challenges did this new president inherit before
[6:13] Speaker 2: this earthquake struck, Well.
[6:15] Speaker 4: The economy itself, it depends heavily on what happens with
[6:19] Speaker 4: the coffee industry in this area, I think. And then
[6:21] Speaker 4: Colombia is already facing steep fiscal challenges and budgetary concerns.
[6:26] Speaker 4: It's high interest rates, high inflation. When Petro left office,
[6:30] Speaker 4: he estimated the fiscal deficit for the coming year at
[6:33] Speaker 4: around five percent. The incoming finance minister says it's closer
[6:37] Speaker 4: to eight percent, which you know, in nominal terms, would
[6:41] Speaker 4: put it among the highest in the region. And I
[6:43] Speaker 4: believe in the world, and of course in a country
[6:46] Speaker 4: like Columbia is with anywhere You know, you can say
[6:49] Speaker 4: you're going to slash spending, but when it comes to
[6:51] Speaker 4: social benefits, popular programs, it's more difficult to do in
[6:55] Speaker 4: practice than it is as a campaign pledge. And the
[6:59] Speaker 4: left remains pretty forceful, and on the day of the
[7:02] Speaker 4: new leader's inauguration was already organizing protests and it's kind
[7:06] Speaker 4: of ready to pounce on any mistake you're getting.
[7:08] Speaker 2: Get what's really kind of the central tension here this
[7:11] Speaker 2: new president's appetite for reform and then this tragedy happening
[7:15] Speaker 2: so soon in his tenure. How much has it beended
[7:20] Speaker 2: his ability to implement these reforms, His appetite for implementing
[7:23] Speaker 2: these reforms.
[7:24] Speaker 4: I think that's still to be determined, and so it's
[7:27] Speaker 4: going to take some time to really understand the level
[7:30] Speaker 4: of damage and what will be necessary to foster recovery here.
[7:35] Speaker 4: They've also declared or announced intentions to declare an economic emergency,
[7:39] Speaker 4: which would give him some leeway to issue decrees on
[7:44] Speaker 4: taxes or spending without congressional approval related to the earthquake,
[7:49] Speaker 4: But that sort of cuts against what his plans were, right,
[7:53] Speaker 4: I mean, his plans were to come in into a
[7:55] Speaker 4: big fiscal package, and to the extent that he was
[7:58] Speaker 4: going to bolster the state was on the front of
[8:01] Speaker 4: the fight against armed rebel groups that have seized some
[8:05] Speaker 4: new territories in more remote parts of Columbia. So it's
[8:09] Speaker 4: obviously going to be a huge complication for his plan.
[8:13] Speaker 4: You know, there could be a rally around the flag
[8:15] Speaker 4: effect that helps him, but of course any misstep, any
[8:19] Speaker 4: perception that he's not handling the recovery well, could put
[8:23] Speaker 4: him off on the wrong foot really quickly.
[8:26] Speaker 2: Oscar, what does that economic state of emergency that Travis
[8:29] Speaker 2: mentioned allow the president to do? And what are the
[8:31] Speaker 2: limitations on that.
[8:32] Speaker 3: A declaration of economic emergency gives the president the right
[8:37] Speaker 3: to pass legislation for three days. That's especially to pass
[8:41] Speaker 3: taxes and raise revenue as fast as they can. So
[8:46] Speaker 3: while the finance Minister said that they wouldn't raise taxes,
[8:50] Speaker 3: the prescident could say increases to the VAT or corporate taxes,
[8:57] Speaker 3: or would have authority to take on multilateral lending. I mean,
[9:03] Speaker 3: it's a very powerful tool. He could declare a corfuse
[9:09] Speaker 3: in cities. It's going to be for thirty days, that
[9:11] Speaker 3: could be extended up to ninety days.
[9:16] Speaker 4: There has been the use of this sort of economic
[9:19] Speaker 4: emergency in the past, in nineteen ninety nine after an earthquake,
[9:22] Speaker 4: so there is leeway to do it, but it would
[9:25] Speaker 4: depend on the scope of how it's issued and what
[9:27] Speaker 4: he tries to do under it. The Colombian Constitutional Court
[9:31] Speaker 4: has the ability to review both the order itself and
[9:35] Speaker 4: any decrease that he issues under it. We saw Gustavo
[9:39] Speaker 4: Petro tried to declare an economic emergency late last year
[9:43] Speaker 4: after Congress blocked a series of tax increases that he
[9:46] Speaker 4: wanted to impose in a bid to get the fiscal
[9:49] Speaker 4: situation a little bit under control, and the court ultimately
[9:53] Speaker 4: blocked that decree, saying he didn't have the authority to
[9:56] Speaker 4: do it.
[10:01] Speaker 2: After the break, Bloomberg's Travis Waldron and Oscar Medina on
[10:05] Speaker 2: what success might look like for Columbia's new president and
[10:08] Speaker 2: how he fits into the right wing wave sweeping across
[10:10] Speaker 2: Latin America. There was no love lost between Columbia's previous president,
[10:28] Speaker 2: Gustavo Petro, and President Trump, but Trump embraced President de
[10:32] Speaker 2: la Espria pretty fast. Hours after he was sworn in,
[10:36] Speaker 2: The US pledged a billion dollars to Columbia as part
[10:39] Speaker 2: of a security package, and after the earthquake, the US
[10:42] Speaker 2: offered more money fifteen point five million dollars in emergency aid.
[10:46] Speaker 2: Then on Wednesday, to offer my sympathy to the people
[10:49] Speaker 2: of Columbia, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Columbia had
[10:53] Speaker 2: authorized joint military operations with the US and.
[10:56] Speaker 1: The Department of War with the State Department is mobilizing
[10:59] Speaker 1: critical life's saving aid to support the Colombian government's robust
[11:03] Speaker 1: response to this tragic event, just as we did in
[11:07] Speaker 1: Venezuela a few weeks ago.
[11:11] Speaker 2: Travis, how big does supporter does this new president have
[11:14] Speaker 2: in President Trump?
[11:16] Speaker 4: Obviously, Donald Trump was a supporter ahead of the election.
[11:20] Speaker 4: He endorsed Day Last friea kind of as is part
[11:23] Speaker 4: of his Donroe doctrine, and he has had successes there.
[11:27] Speaker 4: There has been a series of victories for conservative presidents
[11:31] Speaker 4: who are definitely more friendly to Washington in the last
[11:35] Speaker 4: year or so, Chile, Peru, and now Colombia all in
[11:39] Speaker 4: the last eight or nine months. The relationship between Donald
[11:42] Speaker 4: Trump and other leaders, there's always a bit of a
[11:45] Speaker 4: give and take aspect to it.
[11:47] Speaker 2: Not to be too cynical here, but I think going
[11:50] Speaker 2: back and looking at the relationship between the US and Colombia,
[11:53] Speaker 2: it was regarded in the US as a very close
[11:55] Speaker 2: ally for a long time. Obviously that changed when President
[11:59] Speaker 2: Petro was the president. What does President Trump want do
[12:03] Speaker 2: you think from Columbia going forward?
[12:05] Speaker 4: I think the main front is going to be on security,
[12:07] Speaker 4: because Petro had a plan for total peace with the
[12:11] Speaker 4: armed groups in which he was prioritizing negotiations instead of
[12:16] Speaker 4: a more forceful hand towards the rebels and the drug gangs.
[12:21] Speaker 4: The new president obviously is going much harder in that
[12:23] Speaker 4: he's promised to build megaprisons. It's a much more Trump
[12:27] Speaker 4: aligned approach, and that will be the place where the
[12:31] Speaker 4: US and Columbia under President Trump are really aligned and
[12:36] Speaker 4: really trying to move forward.
[12:39] Speaker 2: Travis, you mentioned a number of right wing leaders who
[12:42] Speaker 2: have come to power in Latin America recently. What explains
[12:45] Speaker 2: the shift that we've seen here over the last couple
[12:47] Speaker 2: of years in that direction.
[12:49] Speaker 4: There's a couple different theories to that. I mean, this
[12:52] Speaker 4: has been a region that has swung back and forth
[12:55] Speaker 4: ideologically several times over the last two decades. So there's
[12:59] Speaker 4: definitely a an anti incumbency aspect to it that we've
[13:02] Speaker 4: seen across the world. But also I think the security
[13:05] Speaker 4: issues have played a huge role and the left sort
[13:09] Speaker 4: of inability to get its message correct and its strategies
[13:13] Speaker 4: correct on that front. You know, if you look at
[13:15] Speaker 4: the polls across this region, security and organized crime rank
[13:18] Speaker 4: at the top of the list almost across the board.
[13:21] Speaker 4: It sometimes comes in different forms. Chile's was a big
[13:24] Speaker 4: one with immigration in terms of security, others in Columbia,
[13:29] Speaker 4: Brazil is more on the organized crime security front. We're
[13:33] Speaker 4: seeing it now in Brazil ahead of its October election,
[13:35] Speaker 4: and it's a big question of whether that's going to
[13:38] Speaker 4: swing it to the right as well, which would be
[13:41] Speaker 4: you know, the last of the major South American economies
[13:44] Speaker 4: to make the same move at the same time, whether
[13:47] Speaker 4: because of tariff policies or other things. We've actually seen
[13:49] Speaker 4: in polls that Trump is not extremely popular in many
[13:54] Speaker 4: of these countries, and so these presidents are positioning themselves
[13:58] Speaker 4: as friends to Washington. But at the same time, with
[14:01] Speaker 4: some segments of voters, that has the potential to really backfire.
[14:07] Speaker 2: So I think of Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia. The
[14:12] Speaker 2: list goes on and on. Where do you put Columbia
[14:15] Speaker 2: and its new present in that that pantheon.
[14:18] Speaker 3: Well, he's definitely going to be part of that right
[14:21] Speaker 3: wing wave. Delas Predia was inspired by the Fiscal thirty
[14:28] Speaker 3: plan of President Milay, the tough on crime policy of
[14:33] Speaker 3: Del Sabaji Bukeli, and he said that he's gonna cooperate
[14:39] Speaker 3: in terms of security with ecuador President Danielle Noa as well.
[14:44] Speaker 3: And actually the President Milay Chile's cast and equator Noa,
[14:50] Speaker 3: they were here in Colombia when the Las Pida swere name.
[14:54] Speaker 2: For the inauguration.
[14:55] Speaker 4: Exactly. Yeah.
[14:56] Speaker 2: Let me turn back lastly to Colombia and the circumstances
[15:00] Speaker 2: its new president finds himself in. What do you think
[15:03] Speaker 2: a successful response to this earthquake looks like? What does
[15:06] Speaker 2: this new president have to do in the weeks ahead.
[15:09] Speaker 3: Well, he was very radical about his plans of governing
[15:12] Speaker 3: without Congress or like being able to hold talks to
[15:17] Speaker 3: left wing factions. So what I've heard and when I
[15:22] Speaker 3: speak to people who analyze these things, is that he
[15:25] Speaker 3: needs to tone down his harsh stance and politics, so
[15:31] Speaker 3: he has to negotiate to try to get closer to
[15:36] Speaker 3: people the day of the earthquake, he headed to the
[15:41] Speaker 3: Choco province and then he went to pe data and
[15:45] Speaker 3: manisials to the city that were hit the hardest. So
[15:49] Speaker 3: at the end he needs to negotiate with some different
[15:53] Speaker 3: sectors and that's going to be one of his main
[15:56] Speaker 3: challenges because of his personality and how he on the
[16:00] Speaker 3: percidential campaign.
[16:02] Speaker 4: Yeah, I think the probably the main thing for him
[16:05] Speaker 4: is to demonstrate the kind of competence of his government.
[16:08] Speaker 4: Right he's a first time politician, he's never held executive office,
[16:12] Speaker 4: and now he's coming into a challenge that sort of
[16:16] Speaker 4: is defined by the executive response, right, But I think
[16:19] Speaker 4: the initial response is one thing, the longer term response
[16:23] Speaker 4: is another. And as the the reconstruction takes place, especially
[16:28] Speaker 4: in some of these cities that are poor have long
[16:30] Speaker 4: felt neglected by the government, there's a real challenge to
[16:33] Speaker 4: sort of prove that hey, you're here right now, You're
[16:36] Speaker 4: on the ground in this region right now, but are
[16:38] Speaker 4: you going to be here in five or six months
[16:40] Speaker 4: when the buildings are being rebuilt and maybe they're not
[16:43] Speaker 4: going as fast as they want, And so I think
[16:45] Speaker 4: that will be the big challenge for his government, especially
[16:48] Speaker 4: at a time again, when you're talking about cutting back
[16:50] Speaker 4: the state, cutting spending, there's an argument to make on
[16:54] Speaker 4: that front, and he has made it that that will
[16:56] Speaker 4: make things more efficient for the benefit of Colombians. But
[16:59] Speaker 4: you have to prove it, and this is going to
[17:01] Speaker 4: be the sort of situation that really puts a microscope
[17:05] Speaker 4: on those efforts.
[17:11] Speaker 2: This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gura.
[17:14] Speaker 2: To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access
[17:16] Speaker 2: to all of Bloomberg dot com, subscribe today at Bloomberg
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[17:27] Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow

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