Trump Has Many Reasons to Be Upset With Mexico

By Victor Davis Hanson

Last time I talked about our North American problems with Canada. Now I want to turn the emphasis to Mexico.

President Donald Trump has threatened all sorts of trade sanctions on Mexico, a 25% tariff. But why is he doing this? And I think the answer is there’s four things that Mexico knows it has been doing to us with impunity, especially under Joe Biden, that are not sustainable.

The first, it used to run under NAFTA $10-$20 billion trade surplus. Then it went to $40 billion, then it went to $50 billion. And then, during Donald Trump’s first term, we renegotiated it. It kind of stayed static. Now it’s over $175 billion.

But get this, it’s mostly due to China evading tariffs on China by sending raw product materials to Mexico—computers, phones, appliances to be assembled by Mexicans, and then sent under free trade agreements with us, to the benefit of Mexico and China.

But $175 billion—that is the second-largest trade surplus of any country. It’s getting close to China itself.

No. 2 is that we had this open border. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the former Mexican president, said it was a beautiful thing that 40 million people—Mexicans—had come in illegally to the United States. Twelve million or more came in during Joe Biden’s tenure. That was all done with the contrivance of Mexico.

Remember, Mexico looked at that open border as a win-win-win-win situation, No. 1. And Frederick Jackson Turner’s theory of the safety valve—they thought that when people were dissatisfied and underserved in Mexico, especially southern Mexicans, who were indigenous and subject to a great deal of hostility and prejudice by Mexico City, they would go to El Norte rather than march on Mexico City. And they did.

No. 2, they felt that they would form an expatriate community. And that expatriate community, which, as Mr. Obrador claims, is 40 million people—I don’t know if it’s quite that large—but they’re a powerful force for the Mexican government’s point of view within the United States. There are 50 consulates that Mexico puts in the United States to develop that chauvinism and that pro-Mexican attitude among Americans, residents, and citizens.

No. 3, the remittances. Sixty-three billion dollars come to Mexico and that money comes largely from illegal aliens. But more importantly, it comes from people receiving state, local, and federal subsidies. So, you, the taxpayer—in terms of health subsidies, education subsidies, housing, food subsidies—are freeing up cash to send $63 billion back to Mexico.

There’s another problem, and that is the cartels. They welcome in, with the connivance or neglect—I don’t know how you want to term it—of the Mexican government, Mexican fentanyl product shipped from China.

First published in the Daily Signal