Tag Archives: Mexico

Diary of the Second Addams Administration 13.

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            President Donald Trump sees great virtues in building a tariff wall around America.  Is that good or bad?  It depends. 

Trump’s argument is that tariffs are good for America over the long run, even if they have short-term costs.  “Other countries have used tariffs against us for decades, and now it’s our turn.”  Trump has claimed that tariffs will make the American economy “even more self-sufficient, producing more of its energy, lumber, steel, and computer chips than ever before.”[1]  If those hopes come true, there will many jobs—white collar as well as blue collar—created.  The American economy’s supply-chain will become much more secure in a time of rising international tensions.  Trump has conceded that America would experience a “period of transition,” which might include a recession.[2]  

Critics argue that tariffs are bad for America and for everyone else.  First, tariffs raise prices for consumer countries, not for producer countries.[3]  Second, if one country raises tariffs, the other country or countries will raise tariffs on the first country’s goods.  This will reduce exports in what becomes a” trade war.”  Slowing down the domestic economy by raising consumer prices and reducing employment in sectors tied to exports could bring on a recession. 

President Donald Trump has followed a very erratic course on actually imposing tariffs.  Is that good or bad?  It’s bad. 

In early March 2025, Trump imposed a 20 percent tariff on goods imported from China[4] and 25 percent tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada.[5]  China responded with 10-15 percent tariffs on American corn and wheat.  The stock market tumbled and Trump quickly announced a month-long pause on tariffs on imported cars and parts.  The Wall Street Journal wondered “which side of the tariff bed Trump will wake up on” in days to come?  They got a quick answer.  In mid-March 2025, Trump imposed a 25 percent tariff on all steel and aluminum (both unprocessed and turned into something else—look at your soda can) imported into the United States. 

No one seemed to care about the tariff hike for China, but critics insisted that Canada and Mexico take about a third of America’s exports and send the US valuable commodities. 

Is this what got Trump elected?  Journalists posit that Trump won election on the promise of a vibrant economy, low inflation and unemployment, and controlled immigration.  That’s not all they’re getting.  One recent poll reported that 56 percent of respondents disapproved of Trump’s management of the economy.  He tariff-bombed China in his first administration and talked about tariffs in the campaign for his second.  Apparently, no one took him seriously.  Now he is acting like a real lame-duck president: doing what he thinks is right regardless of the polls or the pols—or the stock market.  Albeit in an erratic, bloviating, Trump-like fashion. 

[1] Quoted in “The Trump economy: Adrift in a sea of tariffs,” The Week, 28 March 2025, p. 34. 

[2] “Trump tariffs cause stock market whiplash,” The Week, 21 March 2025, p. 4. 

[3] Which is exactly the purpose of tariffs.  More expensive imports create a market for cheaper domestic producers. 

[4] Previously 10 percent.  The key question becomes whether the American producers can deliver equal goods at a lower cost. 

[5] Even though all three countries are members of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) that replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).  “U.S. tariffs spark North American trade war,” The Week, 14 March 2025, p. 5. 

The Meaning of Murders in Mexico.

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            Steven Pinker is a big believer that things have been getting better for humanity in many ways for a long time.        At the dawn of the Twenty-First Century, you could look at Central and South America for signs of progress.[1]  At the start of the century, Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) finally yielded its monopoly on political power in favor of multi-party democracy. 

From 1929 to 2000, the PRI deployed patronage to hold power.  Along the way, as in any other one-party state, corruption became endemic.  Obviously, in retrospect, one of the most important tasks of post-PRI government would be to build up honest and competent public administration right from the base to the peak of government.  It was going to take time. 

Mexico turned out not to have any time.  At the same time that Mexico moved toward multi-party democracy, another improvements took place.  Columbia won its long war against drug cartels.  Mexican crime gangs who had served as conduits for Columbian drugs now took over production as well.  Then they fought each other—and any interlopers—for control of the trade.  Along the way, policemen, prosecutors, and judges “on the pad”[2] became a valuable resource.  This happened just as Mexico tried to abandon the PRI’s policies.  Now a “vacuum of corruption” sent public officials in search of new patrons.  

            The drug cartels appeared invulnerable to the normal justice system.  The “narcos” even began to become celebrated public figures.[3]  In 2006, the Michoacan cartel let loose a carnival of highly public, grisly killings.  Also in 2006, Felipe Calderon squeaked through a close election to become president of Mexico.  Calderon decided to fight the drug cartels as hard as possible.  Knowing that the local police and courts were in the pockets of the cartels (and that they were incapable from long habit in any case), Calderon opted for a response from the national level.  Resources were diverted from local government to the military, which had the firepower to shoot it out with the gangs.  The government targeted the cartels’ leaders. 

            It worked—up to a point.  Cartels were de-capitated over and over again.  Factions formed and succession battles blazed in the streets.  However, the younger and wilder new drug lords led smaller gangs than had the older cartel chiefs.  They had less cash piled up; they had fewer connections with cops and judges; their connections to suppliers and distribution networks were thinner.  Many of them got pushed out of the business.  These losers in the Jurassic Park of Mexican drug dealing branched out into other forms of violent crime.  Kidnappings for ransom, armed robberies, and extortion all rose sharply.  This pushed the war between drug gangs and between the gangs and the government into the lives of ordinary civilians. 

            All across Mexico the government is losing not just the war against crime, but the war for its own survival.  Popular revulsion against the corruption and ineffectiveness of the government is leading to gangs becoming the effective government in many places.  Or it is leading to private self-defense initiatives—militias, security contractors, lynchings–that ask nothing of the state. 

A failing state on the southern border should deeply concern citizens of the United States. 

[1] Max Fisher and Amanda Taub, “Mexico’s Record Violence Is a Crisis 20 Years in the Making,” NYT, 29 October 2017. 

[2] Old NYPD parlance for crooked cops.  See: Peter Maas, Serpico (1973). 

[3] See for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcocorrido   

Narcostate within a State.

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The Clinton administration (1992-2000) made a great push against the Columbian drug cartels and this effort was continued by the Bush administration (2000-2008). American blocking of sea and air imports forced the Columbians to switch to overland shipments through Mexico. A Mexican gang—the Guadalajara cartel– then sank their talons into the flow of drugs. “If you want to move it through Mexico, then we’re the ones who are going to move it. Or else.” In 1989 the leader of the cartel got arrested. His former subordinates grabbed chunks of turf, creating the Sinaloa, Juarez, and Tijuana cartels. Then they started to fight with one another for larger shares of the flow.

Mexican drug gangs haul in an estimated $8 billion to $23 billion a year. This kind of money buys a lot in a poor country. It buys machine guns and rocket-launchers, policemen and judges, politicians and government officials, and lots and lots of gunmen. From 2006 to 2008 drug gangs killed 3,500 people; during 2008 they killed 6,000; and by April 2009 they killed a further 1,000. Often they did it in gruesome fashion. Possibly as many as 60,000 people have been killed. In a sense, every level of Mexican society has a stake in the trade. Almost half a million Mexicans are involved in the business in some way; songs celebrating the drug lords (”narcocorridos”) are wildly popular with poor Mexicans, and Raul Salinas, the brother of a former president, is sometimes alleged to be the ruler of the Mexican drug transportation business. (“The gang war that’s ravaging Mexico,” The Week, 21 March 2008, p. 11.)

Nevertheless Mexican president Felipe Calderone moved aggressively against the drug lords from early 2007 on. Why did he do so? The huge profits from the drug trade allowed the drug lords to begin buying chunks of the legitimate economy. In a sense they posed a grave threat to the ruling elite in Mexico by seizing both its economic and political power. War followed between the drug lords and the government. When the drug gangs savaged the police forces, Calderone called in the army. Forty-five thousand soldiers flooded into some of the most lawless towns of Mexico. Thousands of low level gun men and dealers have been arrested. However, it isn’t clear that the government is winning this fight. The army may prove just as vulnerable to corruption as have the police and the rest of the government. (“Mexico’s brutal drug war,” The Week, 10 April 2009, p. 11.)

What are the national security implications of this for the United States? The violence and corruption creates the danger that Mexico’s government will collapse or fall captive to the drug lords. This will put a narco-state on the porous border with the United States. If we can’t keep out the drugs or the illegal immigrants, how are we going to keep out the killers and corruptors? For a long time, we didn’t: they were just busy in Mexico. Now the Mexican drug gangs have invaded the United States. They operate in 230 American cities. (“Mexico’s brutal drug war,” The Week, 10 April 2009, p. 11.)

The Sinaloa cartel is the most powerful of these. It centers its American operations in Chicago because it is a major transportation hub in the center of America’s densest population distribution. Moreover, there is a suspicion that the Sinaloa cartel cooperates with the DEA to weed-out other cartels. Apparent victories in the “war on drugs” merely hide the growing power of the Sinaloa cartel. (“Mexico’s drug kings,” The Week, 31 January 2014, p. 9.)