Trump’s North American Trade War Accomplished Nothing
Asked by reporters on Saturday afternoon if there was anything that Canada and Mexico could do to avoid the 25 percent tariffs the White House was threatening to impose on their exports to the United States, President Donald Trump delivered a clear response.
“Nothing.”
That wasn’t true, as it turns out. Those tariffs are now on hold—for 30 days, at least—after the leaders of Canada and Mexico reached deals with the Trump administration on Monday. In both cases, those “deals” include promises by both foreign governments to deploy more troops to their border and to have further discussions with the Trump administration about border security and curtailing drug smuggling.
In each case, it seems like the other countries have simply agreed to the status quo. Trump’s deal with Mexico includes a promise from President Claudia Sheinbaum to deploy 10,000 troops to the border—even though Mexico already deployed nearly twice that number to the border in 2019. The deal with Canada similarly includes a promise of 10,000 troops and $1.3 billion in new border-security spending, which is exactly what the Canadian government said in December it planned to do.
Trump tore up the North American trade deal that he’d signed (and praised as the “best agreement we’ve ever made”) just five years ago. He sent the stock market tumbling, forced the American automotive industry and other manufacturers to beg for mercy, and antagonized two of America’s biggest trading partners and allies. And after all that, he got virtually nothing in return.
Indeed, Canada’s and Mexico’s governments may have gotten more. Their leaders learned that Trump sees 10,000 as a big and significant number and that they can appease his tariff fever by promising to just keep doing what they already do—as long as they make it sound like he’s convinced them to change course.
“Trump did not extract anything new from Mexico with his threat of tariffs,” writes Dominic Pino at National Review. “Thi
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