After much of the day, President Donald Trump’s administration has announced a date on which 25 percent of the tariffs will be imposed on most of the goods entering the United States from Mexico and Canada. T-day was set for February 4 when it would take effect some retaliation from its neighbors.
Americans are now struggling for what they expect to be higher prices for imported goods. So far, US media has focused mainly on sympathetic examples such as tequila, avocado and beer, so there is a tendency to underestimate the effects of the tariff. However, American households will inevitably be strongly removed outside alcohol and food.
Indeed, the imposition of tariffs in the region where the store is so deeply integrated is a disaster recipe. Let’s take the case of the US-Mexico relationship. Mexico is the largest commercial partner in the United States with more than $ 1.2 million of goods passing over a common border every minute. However, the economic significance of Mexico is underestimated at every turn because the country is constantly displayed to the US public as a depleted unsuccessful drugstate. Indeed, this account is the one that Trump should call for the urgent forces needed to launch these tariffs.
The US president could no longer go wrong when he says he doesn’t need Mexico now. He is so wrong that by implementing the tariffs will not only launch inflation – because Americans will pay more for the goods that they do not produce now – but will also undermine the industry itself. Regardless of the retaliation of measures that the Mexican government decides to follow, it will worse for US consumers and various industries.
Even some of the products that focus on rather superficial analyzes on American media – like beer – show how much it will be distracted by this irrational move. Mexico is a large manufacturer and beer exporter, but for the maintenance of this industry it buys 75 percent of US barley exports. Any disorder in the production of beer in Mexico due to lower demand than its biggest customer – USA – will inevitably hit US barley manufacturers. The situation is similar to thousands of other products that depend on cross -border supplies.
Trump’s fan could kill, “Smile and drink it. Disrupted supply chains will recover.” This is easier to say than to do, but assuming that it is possible to move everything to the US, Americans would still face a catastrophic situation.
Take the North American auto industry. It is widespread throughout the region, enhanced by the US-Mxico-Canada trade agreement, so that vehicles can cross the US and Mexico, because each country gradually adds value to every car and truck. Trump’s logic claims that the tariffs will force car manufacturers to return all production to the US and keep all that value for themselves.
That won’t happen, and that’s the reason.
In this industry, highly qualified but low paid jobs that have stubbornly difficult to automate are often done in Mexico. No qualified US or Canada worker would ever accept the salaries that Mexicans are willing to take over, and these workers add key parts throughout the vehicle production. The final result is an accessible car but also provides well -paid jobs.
Thanks to this system, the world is the fifth of the world’s largest car exporter, and Canada and Mexico are some of his best customers. This is a position in which the country is able to retain only thanks to qualified Mexican workers who reduce the price. Several prohibitions of all the imports of cars, China and other efficient, effective countries to make car could easily underestimate vehicles in America, even with strong tariffs.
It is also worth noting that if moved to the United States – in the tragic turn of fate with respect to Trump’s mass deportations – companies have been encouraged to hire unproven work to succumb to minimum wages and lower prices, just as they are already agricultural The construction industry is already the agricultural and construction industry to do.
Ultimately, Trump is right about one. When it comes to North America stores, one side subsidized the other. But it is not American subsidizing Mexico or Canada, as he says. Mexican workers have subsidized the US, corporate profit and its consumers.
There is still a way to fix it.
While Trump and American economic nationalists are guilty of Mexicans for the “theft” of their industrial affairs, Mexico works to make the entire supply chain more robustly as a very real concern for American workers because of companies that depressed depressingly pay Mexican salaries. The Mexican government did so by doubling the minimum wage and taking steps to strengthen the union, while maintaining labor costs competitive.
If US workers really want to protect their job without sinking in Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric, transnational cooperation of the Union in the United States -Mexico is the right way to strengthen the rights of workers on both sides of the border. Review of the USMac -e 2026. Would be the perfect place for this conversation. But if the trade agreement does not survive for so long, the workers will have to take the initiative themselves.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeere.
