Colombian President Gustavo Petro has vowed to stand firm after the US imposed sanctions on him over alleged links to drug trafficking, calling Washington’s move a “paradox” given his long-standing cooperation in the fight against narcotics.

“What I received for a decades-long, effective fight against drug trafficking was such a move from the government that we have helped a lot in curbing cocaine consumption,” he wrote on the X social media platform on Friday.

He added that it’s “an absolute paradox, but there will be no stepping back and getting on our knees.”

On Friday, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced new sanctions against Colombian President Gustavo Petro, his wife, and his son, along with Interior Minister Armando Benedetti, who has also been added to the blacklist.

Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent claimed that since Petro “came to power, cocaine production in Colombia has exploded to the highest rate in decades, flooding the United States and poisoning Americans.”

Last week, US President Donald Trump called Petro an “illegal drug leader,” claiming that his Colombian counterpart is ”strongly encouraging the massive production of drugs” across Colombia.

Trump also threatened that his administration would cut off all subsidies to the Latin American country.

Last month, the Trump administration accused Colombia of failing to cooperate in the drug war, although at the time Washington issued a waiver of sanctions that would have triggered aid cuts.

The US also revoked Petro’s visa after he joined a pro-Palestinian demonstration in New York and urged US soldiers to disobey Trump’s orders.

Colombia under Petro has increasingly voiced support for Palestinian rights and condemned Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Earlier this month, Colombia expelled the Israeli regime’s diplomats over Tel Aviv’s aggression targeting an international Gaza-bound aid flotilla, while urging the US president’s imprisonment for Washington’s complicity in the regime’s genocide in the blockaded coastal Palestinian region.