President-elect Donald Trump has kicked off his diplomacy by promising a 25 percent tariff until Mexico and Canada shut down their inflows of migrants and deadly drugs.
“Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long simmering problem,” he wrote on Truth Social.” “We hereby demand that they use this power, and until such time they do, it is time for them to pay a very big price.”
The statement is a huge turnaround from President Joe Biden, whose deputies tolerated the fentanyl inflow as long as Mexico secretly managed the migrant inflow to prevent a televised border crisis that would damage Biden’s poll ratings.
“If [Mexico] cooperated on immigration, the Biden administration turned the other way on important issues such as security and fentanyl trafficking and all the antidemocratic policies that Mexico was and is promoting,” Rodrigo Montes de Oca, a Mexican lawyer at the Baker Institute Center in Texas, told Fox News on November 17.
Biden also did little about the U.S.-Canadian border. That do-little policy helped many Indians to migrate into the United States via Canada’s pro-migration government.
Biden’s hands-off policies allowed cartels to kill more than 50,000 Americans each year with smuggled fentanyl and other drugs. The laissez-faire policy also allowed investors and CEOs to hire several million low-wage illegal migrants instead of decently paid Americans and their families.
“You can’t lead America if you don’t love the American People,” Trump tweeted in October.
Under Trump, however, Mexico will be pressured to sign a deal that blocks the global migration through Mexico but may hope to win some concessions that exempt Mexican migrants from Trump’s mass-repatriation policy, said Todd Bensman, a border expert at the Center for Immigration Studies.
“Mexico is … in a very weak negotiating position with Trump,” Bensman told Breitbart News.
In a separate post, Trump also threatened China with a ten percent tariffs until it helps to shut down the drug flow:
Until such time as they stop, we will be charging China an additional 10% Tariff, above any additional Tariffs, on all of their many products coming into the United States of America. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/113546215408213585
But the New York Times took a disapproving tone towards Trump’s life-saving policies:
The tariffs would have dramatic implications for American industries, including auto manufacturers, farmers and food packagers, which busily ship parts, materials and finished goods across U.S. borders.
The costs could be particularly high for the industries that depend on an integrated North American market. Adding 25 percent to the price of imported products could make many too costly, potentially crippling trade around the continent. That in turn could cause spiking prices and shortages for consumers in the United States and elsewhere.
Mexico’s economy needs trade with the United States, said Bensman, so it “is just simply going to have to comply.”
