President Donald Trump announced Friday that a successful immigration agreement has been made with Mexico, and called off the threatened tariffs, which had been scheduled to kick in on Monday.
Mexico has agreed to “take strong measures” to stop the flow of immigrants from traveling through to the U.S., Trump announced.
….stem the tide of Migration through Mexico, and to our Southern Border. This is being done to greatly reduce, or eliminate, Illegal Immigration coming from Mexico and into the United States. Details of the agreement will be released shortly by the State Department. Thank you!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 8, 2019
Victory
Trump had been widely criticized over the tariff plan, but the risk appears to have been worth it. Mexico
Rumors of an impending deal had surprised even conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who had vocally criticized Trump’s use of tariffs for negotiating foreign policy. Shapiro tweeted Thursday:
Holy crap! If true, Trump was 100% right and I was 100% wrong. Good on him. https://t.co/KbFVWl9qT5
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) June 6, 2019
No more talking
Trump announced the tariffs on May 30 in response to Mexico’s lackluster assistance with a border crisis that now sees almost 150,000 illegal border crossings per month from Mexico to the U.S.
Trump has accused Mexico of encouraging illegal immigrants to flock to the border. Flyers and advertisements about free goods and services for immigrants have been discovered by authorities, and many of the illegal crossings are people from Central America who pass through Mexico without being detained.
After the tariffs were announced, Mexico offered to send 6,000 troops to its border with Guatemala to stop immigrants from coming into Mexico. For Trump, it was a start, but he wanted more before reversing his tariff plan. Trump promised that more details will be forthcoming in a statement from the State Department.
Trump addresses dissenters
Trump, who is traveling in Europe, said earlier in a taped interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham that Republicans saying they want the tariffs to be delayed or questioning the decision are only hurting the process.
“What they’re doing is they’re hurting a deal. They should be saying, we’re with the president, we’ll do whatever he wants to do, and Mexico would fold like an umbrella,” Trump said, adding that they should be “ashamed of themselves.”
Mexico recognizes that the 5 percent tariffs, which will scale up to 25 percent by October if no agreement is reached, would severely impact trade with the U.S. and be harmful to the Mexican economy. U.S. media also admits that the tariffs would hurt the U.S. as well, causing higher prices and possible lost jobs here.
Tariff Man
Despite the risk to the U.S. economy, Trump has called tariffs “beautiful” and has repeatedly used tariffs — mostly successfully — as a tool to gain concessions for the U.S. Earlier in his presidency, Trump used tariffs on Chinese imports to get China to back off of its own tariffs on U.S. goods.
NAFTA was also renegotiated with terms more favorable to the U.S. after tariffs were threatened. Mexico is the number two importer of goods into the U.S., after only China.
Despite much skepticism, Trump seems to know how to use tariffs as a tool to get what he wants — better terms and conditions for the U.S. after eight years of Obama rolling over and letting the rest of the world walk all over the U.S.
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