Trump and Mexico

At the moment I am reading Yannis Varoufakis’ book Adults in the Room, his account of his negotiations with the EU concerning Greek debt. Varoufakis is a self-promoter, but a moment in the book when he tells the EU negotiators that he was elected by the Greek people to do what they want, not to be subservient to the EU’s troika, came to my mind when I read about Mr Trump’s latest threat directed at Mexico.

By way of background Mexicans (documented and undocumented) and Americans (ditto) have been crossing the border daily ever since the USA seized the Mexican territory that is now Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California at the barrel of a gun a century and a half ago. In 1942, Mexico solved a critical labour shortage in the USA by signing the Mexican Farm Labor agreement which provided workers for jobs that Americans were not available to do or did not want to do, until the US abolished it in 1964. This did not stop the flow of Mexican across the border. The numbers entering the USA increase when the Mexican economy is not strong or when the US economy is booming, and decrease when times are good in Mexico or bad in the USA.

Some years ago, a university friend was the Mexican consul in San Francisco. He told me that he had two essential duties. One was to visit Mexican citizens who had been arrested to ensure that their rights were not violated. The other was to run a mobile service that toured the fields issuing a credential that certified that undocumented workers were Mexican citizens, which enabled them to open bank accounts and apply for a driver’s licence. My friend told me that the US authorities liked the credential because it reassured them that the Mexican workers were not Muslims (and thus not a terrorist threat). In other words, both governments benefited. The Mexican government credential enabled their citizens to live relatively normal lives, and the US was reassured to some degree that undocumented workers were not a risk to public safety.

You will recall that the latest threat is not the first that Mr Trump has issued against his southern neighbour. During his election campaign he promised to build a big, beautiful wall on the southern border and that “the Mexicans will pay for it”. Why the Mexicans should agree to pay was never clear, and, of course, they politely declined to do so. Once in office, he threatened both the Mexican and Canadian governments with tariffs, which violated his government’s treaty with both nations, known in the USA as NAFTA ,and in Mexico as TLCAN. The treaty was renegotiated on the Mexican side by President Peña Nieto, the predecessor of the present incumbent, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). AMLO honoured his predecessor’s agreement and submitted it to the Mexican legislature for approval. On the very day that AMLO submitted the agreement, Mr Trump threatened tariffs, starting at 5% and rising to 25%, on all Mexican imports to the USA unless the Mexican government took unspecified steps to reduce undocumented immigration into the USA. This was a direct violation of the agreement that the Mexicans were in the process of ratifying. As you may have read, the Mexicans reacted calmly, sent their foreign minister to Washington and reached an agreement with the US administration. Some press reports suggest that, in the main, the Mexicans simply agreed to things they were about to negotiate with the US in any case. I do not know if this is true.

This incident raises a few questions. First, the increase in the numbers of people reaching and crossing the southern US border does not consist solely of Mexicans, but principally of citizens of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua – in short countries to the south of Mexico. These countries have a long history of US interference to support particularly vicious and generally military or quasi-military regimes. Google Roberto D’Aubuisson in El Salvador or Oliver North and the Contras in Nicaragua and you will see what I mean. These also happen to be countries whose development aid from the USA has been severely reduced by Mr Trump. The current immigrants do not want to stay in Mexico but to enter the USA and, in many cases, to claim asylum. This raises two questions. Why is it the Mexican government’s sole responsibility to prevent people travelling to the USA? If the USA cannot stop these people crossing the border, how does it think the Mexicans, with far fewer resources, can do so? Much of the southern border of Mexico is remote and barely under government control. And if the US government finds it difficult to provide adequate shelter for those who cross the border, how can Mexico pay for even larger numbers stuck on the border because the US refuses to admit them? Should Mexico now threaten its southern neighbours in similar fashion and what would this achieve?

It is true that much of the vile people trafficking that transports across the US border is carried out by Mexican drug cartels, which have expanded into other illegal businesses, and into legal activities funded by drug profits. It is also true that corruption, from local police officer to senior military men and politicians, in Mexico protects the drug cartels, and therefore the people traffickers. However, it is equally true that demand for drugs in the USA fuels the drug trade. Moreover, high-powered weapons that are legal in the USA are illegal in Mexico, but nevertheless are sold into Mexico, on one occasion at least with the connivance of the US government.

AMLO was elected on the promise of improving the lot of the poor, ending corruption (a very tall order in six years), and reducing violence (ditto). He has taken steps, some symbolic and some real to deliver on his promises. He has increased pensions for many Mexicans, but has scrapped the pensions received by former Mexican presidents. He has reduced his own salary and that of senior government employees. He sold the recently-purchased presidential plane and flies on low-cost carriers. He refuses to live in the official presidential residence, Los Pinos, which he has turned into a museum and cultural centre. He has also made some dubious decisions and his achievements may not be equal to his profuse rhetoric.  However, Mr Trump’s tariffs (which still threaten if Mexico fails to achieve goals that he refuses to define) would have caused huge damage to the Mexican economy and would have driven Mexicans north with the Guatemalans, El Salvadorans etc. In short, they would have made matters worse.

One must also ask whether Mr Trump’s remedies will have any beneficial effects. A wall or a blockade at the border will probably stop quite a lot of people crossing. Those who do cross will do so at greater peril to their lives. But those whom the US most wants to keep out, drug smugglers, people traffickers and other criminal elements, have the resources and know-how to get themselves or their goods across the border or to circumvent barriers. Those people need to be targeted with intelligence, and preferably with the cooperation and good will of the Mexican government. Mr Trump’s insistence on loudly proclaimed initiatives to keep everybody out will exclude those who could live and work to the benefit of the USA and will stop very few criminals.

But the key point really is why does Mr Trump think the president of Mexico’s top priority should be to do his bidding every time his whim or temper causes him to issue a threat? That was the point Mr Varoufakis made about the Greek government and the EU, and the same is true for Mexico.

One comment I read by a Mexcan writer compared Mr Trump’s threats to the behaviour of  an armed robber holding up a family in a car with a gun pointed at a child’s head. The driver could refuse in a dignified manner to hand over his money, or he could persuade the robber to take what he can offer and leave. AMLO seems to have followed the latter course with modest success for now.