Top officials from the first Trump administration are cashing in on Latin American countries' hopes and fears about the president’s trade and tariffs policies, recent filings with the Department of Justice's Foreign Agents Registration Unit reveal.
In August, Continental Strategy, LLC — a government relations firm founded by Carlos Trujillo, Trump's former ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), and managed by Alberto Martinez, Secretary of State Marco Rubio's former chief of staff in the Senate — took on two new government clients in the region, Peru and the Dominican Republic's Industry and Trade ministry, for $390,000 and $330,000, respectively.
Documents on file with the DOJ indicate the contracts are aimed in part at reversing the 50% copper tariffs impacting Peru and positioning the Dominican Republic as a prime location for nearshoring amid tariffs on Mexico and China.
Continental’s fresh foreign registration filings follow the recent naming of John Barsa — the first Trump administration’s top Latin America official and later acting administrator at USAID — as partner at the firm.
They also come on the heels of at least three other Latin America and Caribbean government contracts Continental has inked so far in 2025 with Guyana, Haiti and the Dominican Republic's intelligence agency, and a major deal it helped broker through a shipping firm involved in the BlackRock-led consortium to purchase billions of dollars of port infrastructure in Panama and around the world. The signing of those contracts, a combined value of at least $1.2 million, coincided with Secretary Rubio's trips to Central America and the Caribbean earlier this year.
The firm’s corporate clients in the region — including a Dominican sugar producer sanctioned by the Biden administration over allegations of forced labor, a Haitian conglomerate whose owner was sanctioned by Canada for “protecting and enabling illegal armed gangs,” and a venture capital-backed Honduran charter city suing the country for a third of its GDP at the World Bank — have paid Continental another $2.3 million thus far in 2025 to represent its interests before the U.S. government, according to lobbying disclosure forms on file with the Senate.
Continental, which also employs White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles' daughter, Katie, reported a 2,800% increase in revenues in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the same period last year, adding at least 60 new clients to its portfolio since Trump was elected, including countries around the world like Kenya, Japan, and Albania.
Yet its principals' particular experience at the nexus of Latin America policy, Florida campaigns and Republican politics, combined with the region's unique vulnerabilities to the administration's trade and tariff policies, have turned Continental into the top K Street firm for Latin American and Caribbean governments seeking access to the Trump administration, according to a review of active FARA filings.
While former Bush and Obama administration officials responsible for Latin American affairs like Amb. Tom Shannon, Amb. Hugo Llorens and Amb. Roger Noriega, among others, continue to represent regional governments during the second Trump administration, no other firm’s Latin America portfolio has witnessed growth in 2025 quite like Continental’s.
That access could be in part because Trujillo and his colleagues helped raise $15 million for Trump’s inauguration and established an in-house policy of only working with foreign clients that it sees as aligned with the Trump administration’s objectives, according to insiders familiar with the firm.
“We didn’t just show up in Trump World two months ago,” Trujillo said in May, adding that his relationships “make it easy to navigate” Washington.
Martinez, who worked on Rubio’s team for 10 years, was named managing director of Continental’s Washington office a matter of days after his former boss was nominated as secretary of state. On his new role, then-nominee Rubio put out a statement saying that Martinez “possesses a rare blend of strategic insight, integrity, and unmatched experience” as well as a “deep understanding” of Trump’s policy agenda.
Continental’s senior vice president Rick de la Torre, a former CIA Chief of Station in Latin America, similarly shared a picture on LinkedIn with Rubio, his “hometown hero,” upon the Florida senator's nomination as the United States’ top diplomat.
Trujillo, a four-term Florida state legislator who was nominated to become Trump’s top State Department official for Latin America in 2020, could be seen sitting directly behind Rubio at his Senate confirmation hearing this January. According to an investigation by Politico and a profile of Trujillo in The New Yorker, Trujillo — who multiple Latin America analysts call “Little Marco” — wound up in the first Trump administration per the recommendation of both Rubio and Susie Wiles.
A Miami-born Cuban American like Rubio and his Continental colleagues Martínez, Barsa, de la Torre and partner Alex García, Trujillo was a firm supporter of economic sanctions and regime-change efforts aimed at left-wing governments, such as Cuba’s, during his tenure as Trump’s first term OAS ambassador.
“If you look at what’s happened in Cuba, the complete collapse of their economy was all driven by the pressure that President Trump implemented,” Trujillo told NBC last November as his name was being floated to become the Trump administration’s top official for Latin America.
Along with its representation of foreign governments, Continental lobbies for a number of public entities and prominent institutions in South Florida, as well as many multinational corporations owned by powerful Cuban Americans, including those who have underwritten Rubio’s political career (the Fanjul brothers’ American Sugar Refiners and Central Romana Corp) and financed the pro-embargo lobby (Jorge Mas Santos’ Inter Miami FC and MasTec).
This summer, to expand the firm’s domestic work, Continental also brought on Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-Fla.) long-time chief of staff, Craig Carbone, as its newest partner.
For Latin American governments, Continental’s unique access to Trump’s world has already seemed to bear fruit, particularly the recent deals with Peru and the Dominican Republic. The day after President Trump announced 50% tariffs on copper imports, Peru, the world’s second largest producer, signed its Continental contract, which states that the firm will provide “facilitation of engagements between Peruvian government officials, members of Congress [and] administration officials” as well as engage in “advocacy regarding ‘America First’ trade policies that impact Peru.”
The following day, the conservative think tank Hudson Institute organized a panel titled, “Peru’s Strategic Moment,” at the same time as four Republican members of Congress and one Democrat, led by House Financial Services Chairman French Hill (R-Ark.), participated in a bipartisan delegation to the country, meeting with President Dina Boluarte and other top officials. A month prior, the Peruvian embassy organized a commemorative event on next year’s bicentennial of U.S.-Peru relations at the U.S. Capitol featuring three South Florida Members of Congress.
And just last month, House Armed Services Committee Vice Chair Rob Pittman (R-Va.) led a separate congressional delegation to Peru, the same day as Alfredo Ferrero, Peru’s ambassador to the U.S. and the foreign principal listed on the Continental contract, met with the National Security Council’s top official for Latin America, Michael Jensen.
The Dominican Republic’s industry and trade ministry, for its part, hosted a high-level Atlantic Council delegation shortly after foreign principal Claudia Pellerano, president of the country’s free trade zone association, signed the contract with Continental. Pellerano is a member of the Atlantic Council’s DR-US Economic Advisory Group, which according to its site was made possible through a grant from the country’s industry and trade ministry.
Another member of the advisory group — which touted the Emirati-financed Caucedo Port during its delegation and will soon release a report on nearshoring opportunities in the DR — is Jessica Bedoya, the romantic partner and senior adviser to former State Department Latin America envoy Mauricio Claver-Carone, a longtime ally of Rubio and Trujillo’s whose private equity group LARA Fund is focused on seeking Middle Eastern investors for Latin America.
As the Trump administration’s trade and tariffs policies continue to both roil and seduce Latin American and Caribbean governments, Continental will likely continue to be first in line to cash in — another conspicuous, albeit underreported, case of the revolving door in Washington's murky foreign influence web.
