The Patriot Post® · The Mexican Tariff Standoff
With Donald Trump, there are often two different ways to take things: literally or as negotiating propositions. When it comes to the tariffs he pitched over the weekend, he does generally prefer tariffs to other types of revenue, but they were more of a tool to achieve something else than an end in themselves.
The numbers indicate what he was after. It certainly seemed bizarre for Trump to institute a 10% tariff on our number one geopolitical foe, China, while slapping 25% tariffs on our friends, Canada and Mexico.
Then again, what if those numbers are a clue to what he hopes to accomplish? Trump probably aims to keep the tariffs on China and to strengthen our trade position against Beijing. With Canada and Mexico, he chose shock and awe in search of concessions on the border crisis.
Those concessions are exactly what he got, and within hours.
Following separate phone calls with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Monday morning and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the afternoon, our neighbors announced new cooperation measures, so Trump put a 30-day hold on new tariffs.
The good news: Both Sheinbaum and Trudeau will immediately deploy 10,000 additional troops to their respective borders to aid security. Canada’s plan includes $1.3 billion in spending and a new fentanyl czar.
The undetermined news: Canada is in political turmoil, with Trudeau heading for the exit and Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre poised to win election, so no one knows what cooperation will look like a few months from now.
The bad news: Mexico is a failed narco-state run by a socialist, and the drug cartels are not going to close up shop and go home so easily. In fact, the cartels buy influence in the government, including police and the military. At least some of those 10,000 troops might well assist in trafficking drugs rather than stopping the flow. If there’s to be a Mexican fentanyl czar, that person might be less a law enforcer and more akin to Walter White in “Breaking Bad.”
Regardless, Trump was happy to declare victory.
What are the metrics to measure his success? Arguably, the most important one will be illegal border crossings, which Border Czar Tom Homan says are already down a whopping 93% in two weeks.
Again, the question comes back to whether we should take that literally. Leftmedia “fact-checkers” certainly will, as they try to determine if Homan was statistically precise. That, of course, is not really the point. You see, all of Trump’s moves regarding immigration have been to send a simple message: Unlike the red carpet rolled out by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the border is closed to illegals.
Will he win the birthright citizenship fight? Will the courts strike down Remain in Mexico? What actual role will our National Guard play? Will Mexico and Canada fully follow through on every promise to avoid tariffs? Did they even really concede anything they hadn’t already been doing?
The answers matter, of course, but what might just matter more is the message. If you’re a cartel thug, you’re probably not giving up on the cash cow, no matter what. If you’re a hard worker with a family who just wants a better life, you’re probably not going to risk crossing a closed border. We shouldn’t underestimate the deterrent effect of Trump’s blitz of border actions.
Trump comes out of the tariff fight claiming victory. Trudeau and Sheinbaum also get to show toughness on things that matter while getting Trump to back off on costly tariffs. In that sense, at least, it’s a win-win-win.