5 Ways Trump's New Tariffs on Mexico Could Backfire
The Man is an idiot. This won't work out well, for anybody.
Per NY Magazine:
Donald Trump has a problem. The president’s defining issue is border security and curtailing illegal immigration. But adverse conditions in Central America’s Northern Triangle are sending tens of thousands of asylum seekers to the United States each month. And once these migrants reach U.S. soil — even if they do so by crossing the border illegally — they are entitled to make an asylum claim, which typically takes months, if not years, to fully adjudicate.
The Trump administration does not have enough trust for these asylum seekers to release them into the country while they await their day in court — but it does not have enough cages for them, either.
The president would like to solve this problem by either changing asylum law or ignoring it. But a divided Congress isn’t about to reach the “grand bargain” on immigration that has eluded it for decades on the eve of a presidential election. And Trump has yet to install enough lackeys in the judiciary to completely nullify existing federal statutes.
Thus, the administration has turned its focus to coercing Mexico into solving the United States’ border crisis for it. Specifically, the White House has lobbied the government of Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (a.k.a. AMLO) to ramp up security on Mexico’s border with Guatemala, crack down on international organizations that aid Central American migration to the U.S., and to allow those seeking asylum in the U.S. to stay on the Mexican side of the border while they await their hearings.
The Mexican government has offered a degree of cooperation on all of these fronts. But even with this help, in May, border crossings into the U.S. hit a 12-year high. So now, the Trump administration is pressing a more sweeping demand: It wants Mexico to declare itself a safe harbor for Central Americans fleeing the Northern Triangle, in what is known as “a safe third country” agreement. This would mean that Central American migrants who travel to the U.S. southern border would no longer be entitled to asylum hearings in the United States, as they would have already secured the right to seek asylum in Mexico, a safe country.
The Mexican government does not wish to sign such an agreement for a variety of reasons. Some of these are self-interested: The mass migration of Central American asylum seekers isn’t much less controversial with the Mexican public than it is with America’s. But Mexico’s most compelling objection is rooted in the facts of the matter: Given Mexico’s own problems with gang violence and police corruption, it is far from clear that Central American asylum seekers are safe in Mexico.
Here’s a quick rundown of five distinct ways Trump’s tariffs on Mexico could backfire.
1. They could prevent Trump from winning approval of his new version of NAFTA before the 2020 election.
2. The tariffs could actually hurt American exporters.
3. Trump could end up squandering his top political asset.
4. The United States just demonstrated that its allies cannot trust it to honor the terms of trade deals — so why would China?
5. AMLO may now be less inclined to help the U.S. with its asylum “problem.”
Read More:
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/trump-mexico-tariffs-asylum-migrants-usmca-backfire-trade-war-explained.html
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