For many decades, in their laments against illegal immigrants from Mexico, conservatives have repeatedly exclaimed, “Why doesn’t Mexico just get its economic house in order so that its citizens don’t have to ‘invade’ the United States to better their lives through labor?”
While economic conditions in Mexico are not desperate, like in Cuba or Venezuela, Mexico has always been — and continues to be — a very poor country economically. That’s because its economic system has always been based on a combination of socialism, regulation, and interventionism.
Nonetheless, Mexico has recently experienced fairly stable economic conditions. For example, in January, the country’s inflation rate was down to 3.69% — its lowest point since 2021. The Mexican peso has been fairly stable — at least there haven’t been any recent major devaluations.
One of the biggest factors in Mexico’s fairly good economic conditions has been the massive amount of trade with the United States. It is estimated that 80 percent of the goods that Mexico exports go to the United States.
Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. © Tomas Castelazo, www.tomascastelazo.com / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0.
As we libertarians have long maintained, the more people are free to trade with others, the higher their standard of living will be. That’s because in every trade, people give up something they value less for something they value more. Thus, people can improve their economic well-being through the simple act of trade.
And that is precisely what Mexicans have been doing to improve their economic conditions. They have been trading with Americans. Part of this interactive trade has involved American businesses establishing themselves in Mexico, where they hire Mexican workers.
Given the wish that American right-wingers have expressed over the decades that Mexico get its economic house in order so that Mexicans will stay at home instead of “invading” the United States, you would think that right-wingers would be exultant over this state of affairs.
Yet, President Trump and his merry band of tariff supporters are now threatening to wreak economic devastation on the Mexican people with a 25% tariff on many Mexican products shipped into the United States.
Now, it’s true that a tariff is a sales tax on American purchasers of those goods, a point that Trump and his Trumpsters don’t seem to get. They appear convinced that it’s going to be “Mexico” that pays the tariffs. But one thing Trump undoubtedly does realize is absolutely true — the tariffs will cause Americans to buy less from Mexico — significantly less — which will throw many Mexican businesses into an economic tailspin. Moreover, Trump’s tariffs will cause many American businesses operating in Mexico to shut down, which means big layoffs of Mexican workers.
What’s the point? Why inflict massive economic harm on people who are already poor and who are struggling to do better? Why such extreme viciousness against anyone but especially against poor people who live in a nation that has long been best friends of the United States?
Trump says that his tariffs will bring in revenue to the federal government. So what? He’s going to inflict massive harm on poor people who are struggling to do better so that the U.S. government has more money at its disposal?
My hunch is that Trump is still angry over the fact that Mexico refused to pay for his beautiful Berlin Wall along the border that he constructed when he was president the first time — and that obviously didn’t work, as reflected by his decision to further militarize the border. You’ll recall that he promised that Mexico would pay for his wall. Maybe he has still not forgiven the Mexican government for demonstrating that his promise was an empty one.
Trump says that he is imposing tariffs on Mexico because the Mexican government has not halted the flow of fentanyl and the flow of migrants into the United States. In other words, he wants the Mexican government to enforce the U.S. government’s decades-long, failed, deadly, and destructive wars on drugs and immigrants.
What Trump has failed to explain is that if the U.S. government has been unable to prevent drugs and migrants from entering the United States despite decades of an ever-increasing militarized border police state, why should anyone think that Mexico can do it? What Trump just doesn’t get is that drug controls and border controls just don’t work, as we have seen for decades. Unfortunately, it will be both the American people and the Mexican people who will end up having to pay the price for Trump’s failure to see reality.
One thing is for certain: If Trump follows through with his massive tariff attack on the Mexican people, he and his merry band of tariff Trumpsters will, once again, be lamenting down the road, “Why doesn’t Mexico get its economic house in order so that Mexicans don’t have to ‘invade’ the United States to improve their lives through labor?”
