United States President Donald Trump has repeatedly floated the idea of remaining in office after his second term ends in 2029.
Since the 22nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1951, no U.S. president has challenged the two-term limit it established. However, attempts to circumvent constitutional term limits are not unprecedented elsewhere.
Virtually every country in Latin America has enshrined constitutional term limits as a safeguard against tyranny.
These rules vary: some allow only a single term, some permit two, while others enable non-consecutive re-election. Yet several presidents have managed to defy these provisions.
Recent examples include Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador and Nayib Bukele in El Salvador.
Although the institutional norms and political cultures of these countries differ from those of the U.S., examining how term limits have been dismantled offers valuable insights into how any similar efforts by Trump might unfold.
The most common tactic is for presidents to first ensure their political party in the legislature is fully subservient to them, and then leverage a loyal majority to amend the constitution — a move that has already been initiated in the U.S.
Ortega and Correa successfully used their legislative majorities to pass constitutional amendments that eliminated term limits in Nicaragua and Ecuador.
Whether Trump has achieved the same level of unwavering loyalty among Republicans is debatable, but getting amendments through the U.S. Congress is significantly more difficult. The process requires a two-thirds majority vote in both houses, followed by ratification from three-quarters of state legislatures.
In contrast, Nicaragua’s constitution can be amended with a 60 per cent majority and, as in Ecuador, sub-national jurisdictions have no say in the matter.
Another crucial step involves co-opting or capturing the judiciary. In Bolivia, Morales achieved a controversial third term in 2014 supported by a partisan Constitutional Tribunal. More recently, El Salvador’s Bukele secured a 2021 Supreme Court ruling (from judges he appointed) allowing him to seek immediate re-election in 2024, despite a constitutional prohibition on consecutive terms.
We have seen a worrying pattern of subservience to Trump by the U.S. Supreme Court. The limits of this deference are increasingly uncertain.
Some presidents have turned to plebiscites to legitimize constitutional tampering by appealing directly to the electorate and framing the move as a democratic exercise. Chávez employed this strategy in Venezuela, winning a 2009 referendum to abolish term limits.
The absence of a national referendum mechanism in the U.S. — where popular consultations are organized at the sub-national (state) level — limits the options available to a president seeking to remove term limits through this type of populist ploy.
