WASHINGTON--The top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is blasting the Trump administration’s approach toward Latin America and calling on the White House to wise up and adopt a new policy that brings U.S. allies together at this weekend’s Summit of the Americas.

Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., is leading more than a dozen Democrats who are calling on President Donald Trump to abandon its “divisive ‘America First’ policy” and instead embrace an “Americas together” policy when meeting with more than 30 Latin American and Caribbean leaders at the United Nations-like summit in Lima, Peru this weekend.

“The impact of this administration's approach is clear: American leadership is eroding in the Western Hemisphere,” Menendez writes in the letter to Vice President Mike Pence, who is attending the summit Trump decided earlier this week to skip. "In 2017, U.S. approval ratings plummeted in every country in the region, placing us behind China, and making it more difficult for us to advance our objectives by raising the political cost of cooperating with the United States. While U.S. leadership recedes, China and Russia are filling the void.”

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