BAVARO, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: Latin American and Caribbean leaders will gather Wednesday to discuss regional trade, migration and drug policies in an uncertain new era of foreign relations under new US President Donald Trump.
Countries representing 620 million inhabitants in a poor region largely dependent on trade with the United States will discuss Trump's vows to overhaul his country's commercial ties.
Trump has threatened to protect US jobs by revising international trade accords including the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada.
On Monday he signed an order pulling the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade treaty that includes Mexico, Peru and Chile.
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto will be among the leaders at the one-day summit of the 33-nation Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in the Dominican beach resort of Bavaro.
Trump has vowed to deport foreign criminals and to build a wall to stop migrants entering the United States illegally via Mexico.
"Never has the arrival of a new US president been so enigmatic," said the Secretary General of the South American bloc UNASUR, Ernesto Samper, ahead of the summit.
"But it seems now that the issues he is putting forward are to do with us," added Samper, a former president of Colombia.
"If he is going to kick out Latinos, put up barriers to our exports and restrict investment in these countries, all that will be against our interests."
Cuba's Communist President Raul Castro will also attend the summit, amid questions over how Trump will approach Havana's diplomatic rapprochement with Washington.
Trump has said he may end the diplomatic thaw started by his predecessor Barack Obama if Cuba does not make more concessions on human rights -- an issue on which Havana refuses to be lectured.
Analysts say there are also question marks over what approach Trump will take to Venezuela's volatile economic crisis and Colombia's historic peace process.
Officials said the leaders will also discuss drug crime in the region, a major source of cocaine trafficked to the United States and Europe.