North America faces a new era under the yoke of Donald Trump. The unprecedented tariff measures decreed by the president of the United States come to break the relations that US governments have been weaving for more than 30 years with their neighboring countries, north and south of its borders, but also launches a clear warning to the rest of Latin American nations. The great blow is advised to Mexico, taxing, as of this Tuesday, with 25% rates the export of its main commercial partner, a country that unite close historical ties that went through traumas and fruitful reconciliations. The other great harmed is Canada, to which the same punishment to imports applies and has already announced that it will respond with reciprocal tariffs.
The Republican tycoon has declared a kind of economic autarchy for his people and of political subordination and sovereign humiliation for the region, which appears to an unknown abyss. Trump stands with superb hand in the implacable president of an entire continent, which strangles with commercial restrictions and symbolic messages, redeeming the Gulf of Mexico as Gulf of America or threatening to resume the property of the Panama Canal. The order of the entire continent takes a new course.
Since the first commercial treaty between Canada, the United States and Mexico was signed in 1994 and even before, northern America has walked together as a flourishing region capable of dealing with other world economic poles. There has not been any president at that time, not even Trump that ruled from 2017 to 2021, which has jeopardized the agreed relationships or attacked the economic hegemony that was progressed. The new man who has recovered power has set up the planetary geopolitical order based on encounters with China or Europe, intervening shoes in the wars of the Middle East or Ukraine or instigating the American continent with decisions that show the power that it intends to implement without even attending to the economic consequences that the basron can return.
Unpredictable as it is, Trump has been fulfilling electoral threats in his first weeks of government. Export tariffs of Latin American countries – both their announcement as their effective application – have been the most painful measure and the one that has caused the greatest political turbulence. Canadian Justin Trudeau planted face to the decision from the first moment, in contrast to the soft forms that the Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, opted, although both achieved an extension of one month for the implementation of the onerous measure.
Despite the hopeful sign, the efforts were of no use. At that time, Mexico has imposed restrictions on the products that came from China and designed a whole six -year economic plan to reduce Asian dependence in its domestic market; Tons of drugs for the US consumer and arrested dozens of drug lords have been seized; The last and unprecedented gesture has been the gentle shipment, without extradition agreement through, of 29 leaders of the posters that were already imprisoned in Mexico, including one of the heads most claimed by the United States, that of Rafael Caro Quintero, a powerful criminal who, already elderly, expects new justice in Trump’s courts. Until the death penalty could now be imposed by torture and murder in 1985 of an agent of the DEA, Kiki Camarena, at the hands of the Guadalajara poster that Caro Quintero commanded. But none of all this has satisfied Trump’s claims, which this week announced the imposition of tariffs, a decision that penalizes its main partners, Mexico and Canada, than their declared economic adversaries, the Chinese, who are only imposed by 10%rates.
Keep Latin America at bay
The tariffs have been, since its return the White House, the fright with which the Republican has kept other Latin American governments at bay. He used them, for example, to press the Colombian president with another of his electoral promises: migrant deportation plans. When Gustavo Petro, a clearly progressive politician, rejected at the end of January approved the landing of two flights with deported by the denigrating treatment they were receiving passengers, Trump’s response was fulminant. He announced 25% tariffs and the immediate revocation of visas to Colombian government officials. The threat finally stayed in borage water after Petro agreed to receive migrants and take care of the transfer.
Something similar happened with the conflict that the tycoon opened with Panama for his claim to recover control of the interoceanic route, whose delivery to the Central American country was agreed in 1977 with the signing of the Carter-Torrijos treaties, in reference to former president Jimmy Carter and Colonel Omar Torrijos. Trump complains, essentially, of the rates that American ships have to pay for the use of the channel and his administration came to affirm, after the visit of the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, that Panama had agreed to stop charging them, which was sharply denied by the authorities responsible for the infrastructure. In this case, beyond the economic benefits, Washington also seeks a cooperation by the José Raúl Molino executive to stop the flows of migrants that cross the Tupid jungle of the Darién.
While Brazil, the Latin American economic giant, remains prudent and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has activated all diplomatic channels to avoid the imposition of new tariffs after those applied to steel, Trump has only been kind to his main partner in the region, that is, the Argentine president. The ultra -rightist Javier Milei travels to Washington every time he can and has just participated in the Conservative Action Political Conference (CPAC), where he gave a chainsaw to Elon Musk. On Monday, the US president spoke about a possible commercial treaty with Argentina and said that “he would consider anything”, since Milei, in his opinion, “is doing a great job.”
Mexico counterattack
But in North America the commercial war has already begun and the next chapter, as in any conflict, will be the counterattack. Mexico has again opted for a serene profile that prioritizes negotiations and does not save on presenting respect due to a democratically elected president by Americans. President Sheinbaum has lamented the return of tariffs, since the teams of both countries have been working with boldness this month, in the logical relationship of the strong partner and the weak partner. Mexico has presented its economic advances to stop trade with China of industrial materials and other products, especially related to the automotive sector, which largely ended up arriving in the United States under the false umbrella of the Free Trade Agreement of North America, the TMEC.
Measures to stop the flow of migrants to the United States from the Mexican border have been taken; But, above all, they have been students applied in the fight against crime and drugs, given that Trump has converted fentanyl traffic, which kills about 10,000 people every year in their country, in the great black beast of bilateral relations. Sheinbaum has put to work tirelessly at his secretary at the head of security, Omar García Harfuch, a breast police that at this time has presented a good exam, with results in the persecution of mafia capos and in the destruction of clandestine laboratories in the Mexican mountains and urban suburbs. The strong partner has been evaluating.
But the work teams are not the key in this negotiation, but Trump himself, who in a single vanech of Sisyphus has once again on the ground. This Thursday a new call is between the Republican tycoon and President Sheinbaum, who is confident of uploading the mountain with her stone in tow. Trump’s attacks on Latin America, despite the serious economic consequences that they can have on a region still under development, are joining those peoples under reborn sovereignty. “This goes beyond the matches, goes against the country,” said Sheinbaum on Tuesday. And so the Mexicans see, who have not hesitated to provide their support, the first, the entrepreneurs, who closely see the effects on their businesses.
Sheinbaum, taking great care that his statements do not alter the Republican, insists on transmitting the need to respect the Free Trade Agreement to strengthen the North American economy. And he remembers the United States that Mexico is not to blame for everything: that it is not migration, but of the millions of productivity and taxes that the work of their compatriots leave in the northern country; that the runaway consumption also has the participation of traffickers and distributors of that country; And that the weapons that arrive from the United States, which represent 70% of those that recover in the fight against crime, are the culprits of the thousands of dead who cry in Mexico every year.
This week will be key to evaluating wills and determining whether the veleid president plays politics with their threats or really intends to redesign the relationships that a whole continent has forgating over decades.
