Secretaries of State and Homeland Security encounter objections to hard U.S. line on deportations
MEXICO CITY—Top U.S. officials arrived for talks here Wednesday to find a defiant Mexican government refusing to accept President Donald Trump’s tougher immigration and deportation policies.
.. “We won’t accept it because we don’t have to,” he added, in an apparent reference to U.S. plans to return illegal migrants to Mexico, regardless of their nationality.
.. Mr. Trump’s new guidelines, which flesh out executive orders signed by the president last month, call for enlisting local U.S. authorities to enforce immigration law, jailing more people pending hearings, and sending border-crossers back to Mexico to await proceedings, even if they aren’t Mexican.U.S. statistics show most of those entering the U.S. illegally through the southwest border are from countries other than Mexico.
.. Of more than 400,000 people apprehended in the year ending Sept. 30, more than 220,000 weren’t from Mexico.. The guidelines issued separately this week suggested the U.S. would seek to have people arriving from countries other than Mexico await their deportation proceedings in Mexico rather than in the U.S. At the end of that process, those people would be returned to their country of origin, officials said... Ahead of the visit, Mexican officials suggested that a U.S. pullout from Nafta would affect all aspects of U.S.-Mexico ties.“Logically, there wouldn’t be incentives to continue collaborating on the issues most important to national security in North America, such as the issue of migration,.. Mexico and the U.S. have collaborated for decades on efforts to fight drug cartels, police the border and prevent terror attacks... Mexican officials want to use issues including national security and migration as leverage for future talks about Nafta, experts said
Trump Administration Considers Change in Calculating U.S. Trade Deficit
Tweak in counting exports could bolster president’s case for redoing Nafta, other trade deals
The Trump administration is considering changing the way it calculates U.S. trade deficits, a shift that would make the country’s trade gap appear larger than it had in past years, according to people involved in the discussions.
.. The leading idea under consideration would exclude from U.S. exports any goods first imported into the country, such as cars, and then transferred to a third country like Canada or Mexico unchanged
Economists say that approach would inflate trade deficit numbers because it would typically count goods as imports when they come into the country but not count the same goods when they go back out, known as re-exports.
.. these employees at the U.S. Trade Representative’s office complied with the instructions, but included their views as to why they believe the new calculation wasn’t accurate... A spokeswoman for the Census Bureau, which calculates the trade deficit numbers, said she wasn’t aware of discussions about changing the data.
.. With their focus on domestic manufacturing, Trump administration officials want to measure exports of American-made products, not items shipped from abroad and re-exported... “As a statistician, you generally want symmetry,” said Steve Landefeld, former BEA director. “If you’re going to begin to exclude re-exports from the U.S. export figures, you probably for reasons of symmetry” would want to adjust import figures as well... He has repeatedly cited the $63.1 billion U.S. trade deficit with Mexico last year. Under the new approach the trade deficit with Mexico would be nearly twice as high, at $115.4 billion. The difference is mostly due to the treatment of re-exports.
America Is Already Paying for the Wall With Mexico
Trump now faces a southern neighbor largely united in its anti-U.S. sentiment. This sentiment is not primarily moved by his intention to renegotiate NAFTA; or his racist, anti-Mexican rhetoric; or even by the idea of the wall itself, which anyone who has actually been to the U.S.-Mexico border knows is patently absurd given the topography along the 2,000-odd mile length of the border—not to mention the large swathes of protected or privately owned land there. The sentiment, which led every single political leader in Mexico to demand that President Peña Nieto cancel his trip to Washington, comes from the indignity of the notion that Mexico will somehow pay for the wall.
.. Gratuitously bashing Mexico and Mexican immigrants plays well with Trump’s base, and in his ignorance, he seems to believe he can do it without consequences.
.. As Mexico prepares for a presidential election in 2018, every candidate worth his or her salt will try to outdo the competitors in anti-U.S. posturing. They will promise to expel armed U.S. law-enforcement personnel from Mexico, to legalize drugs, to allow Central American migrants to reach the U.S. border, to stop sharing water with drought-ravaged border states.
.. From an early age, every Mexican is taught that Mexico lost half its territory to its imperialist northern neighbor. Ask any Mexican child and they will name all six “Niños Heroes,” young cadets who died defending Chapultepec castle from the invading U.S. forces in 1847.
.. We will just as soon suffer hardship, or even death, than be submitted to humiliation from the U.S.
.. When Trump attacks Mexico, when he blithely says that Mexico will pay for the wall, he is not pre-conditioning a negotiating counterpart. Instead, he is undoing years of patient diplomacy and riling up a long-dormant Mexican nationalism
.. In essence, Trump is limiting the Mexican president’s range of negotiation, because any concession will now be seen as a sign of weakness, a loss of pride, an attack on our sovereignty.
.. even if both presidents meet and smile and agree to work together, the sentiments of nationalism and mistrust wrought by Trump will permeate throughout the bureaucracy and will be hard to eradicate. Expect less bilateral cooperation in the future, less information-sharing, and less goodwill, all because of Trump’s wall. Mexico would just as soon suffer economic hardship than pay for something so stupid, so offensive, and so useless. If you don’t believe me, go to Mexico and see the monuments we erect to the Niños Heroes for giving up their lives resisting the U.S. invasion.
The Republican Fausts
But if the last 10 days have made anything clear, it’s this: The Republican Fausts are in an untenable position. The deal they’ve struck with the devil comes at too high a price. It really will cost them their soul.
In the first place, the Trump administration is not a Republican administration; it is an ethnic nationalist administration. Trump insulted both parties equally in his Inaugural Address. The Bannonites are utterly crushing the Republican regulars when it comes to actual policy making.
.. Third, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the aroma of bigotry infuses the whole operation, and anybody who aligns too closely will end up sharing in the stench.
The administration could have simply tightened up the refugee review process and capped the refugee intake at 50,000, but instead went out of its way to insult Islam. The administration could have simply tightened up immigration procedures, but Trump went out of his way to pick a fight with all of Mexico.
Other Republicans have gone far out of their way to make sure the war on terrorism is not a war on Islam or on Arabs, but Trump has gone out of his way to ensure the opposite. The racial club is always there.
.. “Precisely because the problem is one of temperament and character, it will not get better. It will get worse, as power intoxicates Trump and those around him.
.. It will probably end in calamity — substantial domestic protest and violence, a breakdown of international economic relationships, the collapse of major alliances, or perhaps one or more new wars (even with China) on top of the ones we already have. It will not be surprising in the slightest if his term ends not in four or in eight years, but sooner, with impeachment or removal under the 25th Amendment.”
.. Already one sees John McCain and Lindsey Graham forming a bit of a Republican opposition. The other honorable senators will have to choose: Collins, Alexander, Portman, Corker, Cotton, Sasse and so on and so on.
.. With most administrations you can agree sometimes and disagree other times. But this one is a danger to the party and the nation in its existential nature.