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In June 2019, Donald Trump threatened Mexico with a series of punitive trade tariffs. The then- president backed off soon after, claiming that he’d secured a series of policy victories as a result of his ultimatum toward the U.S. neighbor.
Indeed, at the time, the Republican seemed eager to pat himself on the back, claiming that Mexico, desperate to avoid tariffs, had agreed to impose dramatic new curbs on immigrants trying to reach American soil, as well as vowing to “immediately begin buying large quantities of agricultural product” from American farmers. Just as notably, Trump said the bilateral agreement included secret benefits that he wasn’t prepared to divulge.
A closer look, however, shredded the entire story. Mexico hadn’t agreed to new curbs on immigrants; there were no new agricultural purchases; and when Mexico’s foreign minister was asked about the secret benefits that Trump referred to, he said he didn’t have the foggiest idea what the American president was talking about.
By all appearances, the Republican backed himself into a corner, pushing a tariff threat that he didn’t actually want to implement. So, as a face-saving move, Trump made up an illusory deal — assuming, of course, that the public wouldn’t know the difference — in order to give himself an excuse to back away from a threat he hadn’t fully thought through in the first place.
More than five years later, something similar appears to have happened. NBC News reported:
In what looks like a case of “he said, she said,” President-elect Donald Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum appear to have starkly different recollections of a conversation that covered the hot-button issue of migration. After the phone chat late Wednesday, Trump wrote on social media that the Mexican leader had agreed to stop immigration through Mexico and to the United States.
Some context is in order. Seven days ago, the Republican president-elect vowed to impose new trade tariffs on imported goods from each of the United States’ three largest trading partners. Trump specifically raised the prospect of slapping a 25% tariff on “ALL products” from Mexico — adding that the policy would remain in place until he’s satisfied that “Drugs” and “all Illegal Aliens” are no longer reaching American soil.
Two days later, Trump published an item to his social media platform, claiming there’d been a breakthrough of sorts: Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, he said, “agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border.”
Sheinbaum soon after issued a statement saying largely the opposite, denying a major policy shift, and making clear that her country has no interest in closing the border.
Nevertheless, Republicans are pretending that Trump’s imaginary triumph is worth celebrating. Sen. Joni Ernst, for example, declared that the president-elect has done “more to secure the border in the last 30 days than President Biden has done in the last four years.” A day earlier, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas also credited Trump, saying his tariff threat “immediately ... produced action.”
But none of this is true. Border crossings have dropped in large part because of policies that were adopted long before last week. The new Mexican concessions that the president-elect and his party are excited about don’t exist in reality.
Or put another way, Mexico has agreed to do what it was already doing, and Trump and his allies now want credit for developments they had nothing to do with, pointing to a tariff threat that increasingly looks like a bluff.
It led Matt Yglesias to conclude, “Trump creating a fake crisis with Mexico over fake tariff threats only to settle it in exchange for fake concessions all over a holiday week when he’s not even in office yet is a reminder of how exhausting-yet-boring four full years of this will be.”