But that’s the perfect beauty of it. Mexico has promised to do exactly what they already intended to do, in accordance with their own laws and policies. But it’s gotten the troll off their backs until the next time he sees a Hispanic taller than himself (quick, make sure he can’t watch basketball).
Again: they did his bidding by rushing back to the negotiating table. They’ve already positioned themselves as beneath Trump and willing to jump when he says jump. Trump knows they are going to do what he tells them. That’s what matters, IMO.
ETA: IMO it’s like how Trump tells lies all the time and if you don’t immediately call him on it, you’ve tacitly agreed with it and now you’re complicit in whatever he’s saying. Mexico fell for the same sort of trap.
Who knows how it played out in reality. Maybe the U.S. sent a delegation to Mexico to work out the arrangements, and they had to sit in a waiting room until someone in Mexico (whoever drew the short straw) had time to talk to them. Trump says Mexico rushed to the negotiating table? Trump says Mexico capitulated? That and five bucks will get you a cup of coffee.
On the other hand, Mexico got the President of the United States to publicly withdraw the threat of tariffs and all it cost them was a couple hours time from some deputy legal adviser. Who’s jumping through hoops for whom?
“Who knows?” People who read the news. There were articles about this every day.
Now you’re lamely spinning it and saying things that aren’t accurate. The threat of tariffs was not withdrawn; that’s the whole point of the agreement.
If you disagree that this looks like Mexico kowtowed to Trump, you should prolly just say so and stop there.
I’m saying that I don’t care what it “looks like”, and I don’t get why anyone does, either. Until Mexico stops an actual migrant coming to the U.S. (over and above what they’re already doing) or the U.S. collects an actual tariff on goods coming from Mexico, it’s all just theater.
The thing is, all the theater of diplomacy used to mean something. Countries were expected to live up to their agreements. At the very least, you could try to form some sort of prediction on how a leader would act in the future based on what he said today. Not so with Trump. Are you thinking of manufacturing something in Mexico and selling it in the United States, and you need to know if there will be tariffs so you can figure out if the investment is worth it? Don’t look to anything Trump said to help you. You’d get a better answer from flipping a coin.
As of late last week, prior to the agreement, import taxes on Americans (aka tarrifs) were set start up on June 10th. It is now June 12 and they haven’t started up. Will they in the future, who knows? But in the short term things are better than they could have been. Trump had rhetorically painted himself into a corner. If he hadn’t gotten a deal he would have been forced politically to go through with the tariffs. This would have been bad for Trump, but it also would have been bad for Mexico. So they could have stood their ground and got 5,10, 15, 25% tariffs imposed while they wait for the Republican senate to find a spine. Or they can agree to do what they were going to do anyway, and let Trump preen.
Yeah, Snowboarder, not really sure what you think the bg deal is. Oh no! Mexico kowtowed too quickly and now Trump is going to make crazy demands and threaten more tariffs! Pretty sure that isn’t a change in the status quo.
Sure it is; that’s a huge change in the status quo. And Mexico said “okay” to it. The status quo is now "Trump says “jump” and Mexico says “how high?” Prior to this the status quo was “2 nations negotiate respectfully”.
So if you don’t see that change in the status quo, then yeah, we have nothing left to talk about.
If you see it, but you don’t see that as stupid, if you don’t see that as enabling a bully, if you don’t see that as a serious tactical mistake in dealing with Trump, then I suppose we just disagree.
A little further along, regarding a symbolic analysis of Imperial Chancellor Dorwin’s promises to the Foundation:
Sounds like in a previous life Lord Dorwin learned how to negotiate with people like Trump.
There’s a constraint that comes from the need to at least show some kind of action in 45 days. There’s a concrete action that they are taking as a result of the tiff. They are deploying some of the first units of their newly created National Guard to their southern border. That deployment started today before Trump had time to forget.
Don’t let the name fool you. The Mexican National Guard aren’t a reserve component military organization despite the name meaning that inside the US. They seem to be more of (yet another) attempt to create a gendarme type force to deal with their massive cartel problem. The US doesn’t really have that type of force operating on a full time basis or under federal control. Our National Guard can perform some tasks related to typical gendarme roles while under state orders…just to muddy the naming similarity some more. The deal to create the Mexican National Guard, in February of this year, put them under civilian control not the military where it would be typical to create a gendarme that focused on internal security and law enforcement tasks. (The approval of the constitutional change by Mexican states was completed pretty quickly. It happened in March.)
Aside from my big concerns about setting a precedent of using what are effectively trade sanctions against relatively friendly nations and important trading partners to get our way, I worry about the real side effects of that deployment. Mexico has been fighting a 12 year war against the cartels for the control of their border states and smuggling routes. Some security experts lump the type of fight under counter insurgencies and the threat is sometimes referred to as a criminal insurgency. This is taking Mexico’s eye off the ball of one of their biggest issues that is also one of our biggest border security issues.
The cartels have a huge role in smuggling across the US border. That includes human smuggling that Trump is primarily concerned about and feeding problems like the opiod crisis. The Mexican National Guard was being crafted to try and fight them not perform routine customs and border patrol duties. It’s not quite up to it’s third month of existence so this is a major deployment while they should still be focused on standing up the new force. That’s going to distract their leadership from important tasks. Another big problem is that the early recruiting for the new National Guard is drawing on the military and federal police. Mexico’s been pulling the personnel that had been fighting the cartels out of the fight. That may makes sense if the goal is to and build a new, hopefully more effective means to fight, the cartels.
Trump got Mexico to pull personnel out of fighting the cartels and assign them other tasks. Simultaneously, he increased the risk that new force fails to realize it’s potential and become and effective tool for the cartel fight. Our southern border is arguably less secure as a result. I can’t help but imagine cartel leadership is sitting around with drinks laughing and celebrating about Trump’s help. It looks a lot like Trump just punched himself in the nuts and declared that he won.
My understanding is that the proposed tariffs would have been contrary to current NAFTA and WTO. That didn’t stop Trump from threatening to impose them, and the new NAFTA wouldn’t stop him either.
The only thing that would stop him is if the Congress amends the laws to reduce or eliminate the President’s unilateral power to impose tariffs.
I’m sure Mitch is working on that law as we speak.
Going through the news, including Reuters and NPR, it sounds like Mexico is adjusting the mission of its new National Guard, turning southern border control from a cursory role into a substantial one. And it’s pretty clear they’re doing so in response to US pressure, and have agreed to deployment progress reviews with the US. Notwithstanding concerns about mission change away from fighting the drug cartels, that seems like a pretty big win for the US and its goal for reducing illegal immigration.
From Reuters:
(bolding mine)
A pretty big win for those who believe illegal immigration via the southern border is actually a crisis. But considering that …
[ul]
[li]most undocumented aliens actually arrive via other routes and simply overstay their visas[/li][li]many Central Americans traveling through Mexico have what may be legitimate asylum requests[/li][li]even those Mexicans and Central Americans who do sneak across the border don’t pose nearly the security threat Trump says they do, let alone an “emergency”[/li][li](as you mention) this action reduces Mexico’s ability to combat the cartels, which are in fact a security threat[/li][/ul]
I’d say it’s a big win for strong-arming a friendly neighbor into an inhumane, unproductive action that actually worsens the situation. Well played, Mr. President!
I quite dislike this talking point. Illegal border crossings still represent a huge chunk of undocumented immigration. “Why worry about the border? It’s only 40% of the problem!” is frigging dumb.
Fair enough. I’m actually all for reducing the number of people sneaking (or being trafficked) across the border – by making the immigration and asylum processes more fair. But strangely enough, that wasn’t part of Trump’s big “victory.”
I’d be in favour of the US establishing asylum application centres at the Guatemala – Mexico border. Determine the criteria for qualifying for asylum and institute a quota of how many successful applicants the US is willing to accept on a daily or weekly basis. And then bus the successful applicants to the US. Having the ability to walk/travel 2500 kilometres being the determining aspect for lodging an asylum application and entering the US is a poor decision factor.
People overstaying their visas seems to be a separate problem from controlling the US/Mexico border. I’m sure that’s an area that also is in need of reform.
But that’s so … so … reasonable. What’s next – one in Turkey for Syrian refugees, too? Panama for Venezuelans? Before you know it, we’ll be overrun by grateful people who want nothing more than to earn a little money and build a life for themselves.
Deployment of U.S. Agents to Guatemala Isn’t New
Part of the problem is that they would probably prefer if a lot of these people settle in Mexico, so I don’t see the free bus ticket to Texas happening soon.
Nah, processing the paperwork of local translators.
Whaddaya know, a constructive approach! If we can help Guatemalans find a better life – even in Mexico – that’s a good thing, even if it’s motivated by our leader’s ignorance and fear-mongering. Thanks for the update.