Reassessing assumptions: A chronicle of bad blood
With the benefit of hindsight it can be argued that Donald Trump’s successful political campaign was built on appealing to a section of the US electorate that felt ‘left behind’, excluded, and disproportionately impacted by the economic crisis of 2008-2009. The cliché was that Trump’s appeal was strongest among inhabitants of ‘rust belt’ cities, where there had been sharp losses of traditional jobs in manufacturing. Like many clichés this contained an important element of truth. In his effort to differentiate himself from the other candidates and present himself as a true outsider, Trump seized on Mexico and the Mexicans as a useful target. He was able to tap into to popular concern by repeatedly attacking NAFTA, job losses, immigration and crime – all subjects where the US could be portrayed as losing power and influence, justifying key slogans such as “America first” and “Make America Great Again”.
As with all populist politicians, Trump sought to reduce complex problems to simple explanations. The causal factors behind the decline of employment in some ‘rust belt’ areas are of course complex and include the impact of automation, the lack of appropriate education and training, and the disruption of old industries by new technology, along with shifts in the global economy. Trump simplified much of this by attributing all these negative symptoms to one culprit: Mexico and NAFTA.
The stream of sound bites and controversial tweets is now familiar as an integral part of the Trump political persona, but it is worth highlighting some of what the candidate said during the course of 2015 and 2016, since it has set the tone for his presidency. Perhaps the most notorious of Trump’s statements was his reference to Mexican immigrants in June 2015: “They are not our friend, believe me. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume are good people.” In March 2015 Trump had tweeted “Mexico’s court system corrupt. I want nothing to do with Mexico other than to build an impenetrable WALL and stop them from ripping off the US.” Also in June: “I love the Mexican people, but Mexico is not our friend. They’re killing us at the border and they are killing us on jobs and trade. FIGHT!” Then in July of the same year, “El Chapo and the Mexican drug cartels use the border unimpeded like it was a vacuum cleaner, sucking drugs and death right into the US.” Much of the campaign was dominated by Trump’s proposal to build a border wall. His claim was that it would stop drugs flows and immigration, and keep out criminals. However improbable this might be considered (much of the drug traffic moves in concealed shipments through existing border posts; a large share of travel between the two countries is by air) the proposal served as a headline-catching symbol.
It also placed Mexican politicians in a quandary. Most dismissed Trump’s statements as offensive and racist. But many were at a loss over how best to deal with a politician who deliberately set out to shock, and who adopted populist postures for the benefit of his home audience. One of the first to suffer difficulty was Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. His agreement to meet Trump in Mexico City on 31 August 2016 backfired disastrously. Trump used the short meeting as a springboard for his electioneering, travelling immediately afterwards to an electoral rally in Arizona where he insisted that Mexico would “100%” pay for the proposed border wall. Peña Nieto, who had approached the meeting according to diplomatic protocol, was unprepared for its blatant political manipulation, and was left to protest that the issue of the wall or its financing had not even been mentioned. In short, the Mexican President was made to look foolish – particularly in the eyes of domestic Mexican voters. The political cost of that meeting was a factor in Peña Nieto’s reshuffle of his ministerial team later that year. The posturing over who would pay for the wall led Peña Nieto to refuse a second meeting; the two men did not have a face-to-face encounter until early in 2017 during the G20 summit.
Just over six months into the Trump presidency, it is now possible to examine how things have changed relative to the traditional assumptions governing bilateral relations between the two countries. Of course the full nature of the Trump presidency has yet to be fully revealed, and the administration could yet evolve and change in unexpected ways. It seems reasonable to believe, however, that the first six months give an accurate though initial sample of what the full four years are going to be like. That allows us to conclude that there definitely are significant deviations from the norm. What we have called Assumption 1 – the shared belief that North American free trade is a good thing – is clearly no longer in place. Most – but not necessarily all – of Mexico’s political parties are still broadly supportive of a free trade agenda. On the US side, however, it is clear that President Trump has legitimised a much more mercantilist and protectionist view.
Despite occasional variations in outlook and some apparent policy contradictions (there have been differences in tone and substance between what is said by President Trump on the one hand, and by some of his top officials on the other) the US President’s consistent message has been that Mexico has benefited from NAFTA at the US’s expense. His pledge to voters remains to “bring back” manufacturing jobs and reduce the US deficit in bilateral trade with Mexico. Many economists have argued that the benefits of bilateral trade transcend this kind of simple zero-sum game analysis of who has a surplus and who has a deficit. From this point of view what matters are the overall benefits that both trading economies reap in terms of efficiency, comparative advantage and the allocation of resources. This has sometimes been expressed by the affirmation that through ‘nearshoring’ in Mexico, US companies have been able to remain highly competitive in global terms. The impact of free trade with Mexico should therefore not be assessed purely from the narrow viewpoint of the bilateral trade account, but from a wider perspective taking into account the impact on the overall competitiveness of the US economy. But these arguments may be beside the point. Trumponomics may or may not be wrong, but it is a political fact of life. The current and future Mexican government will have to manage a relationship with a Washington administration that has been ‘captured’ by protectionist thinking.
Whether Assumption 2 – that gradualist approaches to the migration problem are best – still holds is open to debate. The Trump administration has clearly sought to make an impact with eye-catching hard-line anti-immigration initiatives. The most dramatic and symbolic is the construction of a border wall; there is also a commitment to deport all undocumented workers. However, the administration’s lack of experience in government, the nature of US legislation and legal and administrative processes, all suggest that progress towards these radical objectives will be slow. Six months into his presidency Trump has made relatively little progress towards raising funding for the wall (a project that it is estimated will cost over US$20bn), and does not appear to have convinced a Republican Congress that it is good value for money, or that it merits a high priority. Likewise, while some progress is being made to recruit more border control and immigration personnel, a sharp rise in the number of deportations has yet to materialise. The provisional conclusion is that both the current and future Mexican government will face a Washington administration that is instinctively anti-immigration. But in practice it is possible that immigration policy will not change as suddenly or as radically as feared.
The third assumption we have identified – that both governments should share responsibility for the fight against drug trafficking, organised crime, and security issues in general – is the one where there seems to be the least indication of disruptive change. In other words, the Trump administration seems broadly disposed to continue various collaborative law enforcement programmes with the Mexican authorities. On this matter there seem to be no major disagreements in principle, although the fear is that security cooperation between the two sides could be negatively affected by the ‘contamination’ effect of disagreements in other areas.
Finally, the fourth assumption – that both sides should frame their relationship on the basis of diplomatic language and mutual respect – is one where the break with the past is most acute, and where there seems to be least chance of finding common ground. Since last year’s US election campaign – a period including more than six months of the new US administration – the leaders of these two countries have been unable to hold a meeting where in the subsequent press releases and briefings, both sides agree on what was actually said. Donald Trump and Enrique Peña Nieto have clearly had difficulty getting onto the same wavelength. The issue may go beyond a question of personal chemistry, and may reflect the US president’s decision to use Mexico and Mexicans as a kind of punching bag for domestic political reasons.
An example of regular miscommunication between the two sides came on 31 July when President Trump was praising his new chief of staff, General John Kelly, who had just been appointed after previously serving as Secretary of State for Homeland Security. Trump said the border, previously a big problem, had now been tightened, and there was now what he called “close to 80% stoppage”. Trump added “And even the president of Mexico called me – they said their southern border, very few people are coming because they know they are not going to get through our border, which is the ultimate compliment.” However, the Mexican government quickly denied President Peña Nieto had made any such call or delivered any such compliment. An official statement said there had been no telephone communication between the two men since they met at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany on 7 July. It acknowledged however that migration issues had been discussed at that meeting. It said Peña Nieto had shared Mexican statistics showing a 31% drop in Mexicans deported from the US in the first half of this year, and a 47% fall in Central American immigrants coming to Mexico. A Mexican official insisted, “The information was shared but in my understanding this was merely a case of passing on statistical information, not a compliment.”
