In a span of months with a flurry of attacks on working people, there is one thing that Donald Trump has waffled on more than anything else, and that is the tariffs that he plans to place on a global scale. One day he will announce 25% tariffs, the next he’ll say that they are being postponed. As of writing, April 2 is the day that we expect to see tariffs implemented – the stakes are high for countries all over the world and generally for the world economy, but this is particularly true for Mexico.
What Exactly Are Tariffs?
For some context, a tariff is a tax or duty to be paid on a particular class of imports or exports – these fees are paid by the importing country, in this case the US, causing greater inflationary pressures. In essence, Trump and his administration are placing extremely high taxes, as high as 25-30%, on imports from certain countries on the dime of working people. Countries that he seems to view as a threat to the US are having the highest of these tariffs placed on them. But, it is notable that tariffs are even being implemented on what would be considered allies of the United States, such as the United Kingdom and Australia. This is essentially turning into an all-out trade war, with countries like Canada placing tariffs on the US in retaliation and refusing to revoke them even when Trump concedes temporarily. If it seems like the price of things has skyrocketed even more in the past month, you can thank these tariffs. This strategy from the Trump administration is two pronged – both to establish a more “America First” and “Make America Great Again” mentality in the manufacturing and production spheres and to strong arm other countries into catering to his agenda.
Tariffs On Mexico
While the impact of these tariffs would be widespread, they are especially consequential to the Mexican economy due to its dependence on exporting products to the US. A grand total of 80% of exports from Mexico wind up in the United States each year. The proposed 25% tariffs would wreak havoc on the economies of both Mexico and the United States, who are deeply reliant on each other for income and goods, respectively.
It ought to be noted here that Mexico’s local economy has seen better days, with inflation data indicating a recession around the corner. Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has scrambled over the past couple of months to evade the tariffs that Trump is threatening. She has promised a greater scale of National Guard presence along the US-Mexico border, expanding upon the partnership between previous president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and former US presidents dating back to Trump’s first term. Her solution is to essentially do the job of US Border Control, sinking more spending into the National Guard. In addition to this, she has ramped up the turnover of cartel leaders to the United States, with a transfer of 29 drug lords to US custody at the end of February.
Are Sheinbaum’s Actions Helping Mexico?
Despite these efforts, and the alleged respect that Trump has for Sheinbaum, the delay on the tariffs to Mexico closely mirrors that of Canada, indicating that the concessions she’s making for her country aren’t really making a true difference in how Trump treats it.
As tax dollars are filtered into the National Guard patrolling the border, social services have experienced severe cuts and promises made during her electoral run have so far not been followed through on. Some of those promises included nationalized childcare, medical care, and more. In fact, in many instances Sheinbaum has implemented heavier austerity measures and rolled back many of the more positive things that came out of the AMLO presidency.
Those rollbacks and attacks on public services, alongside Trump’s destructive tariffs, are only worsening the economic conditions that drive migration to the US and the growth of cartels. There has generally been a decrease in Mexicans attempting to cross into the US since early March, but this is not due to better conditions in Mexico – rather, it is due to worsening conditions for immigrants in the US. Many people are still crossing into Mexico from other countries but opting to stay and apply for asylum there rather than cross to the United States due to the crackdowns currently happening under the Trump administration, particularly on immigrants from Latin America.
What Has The Fightback Looked Like?
Generally speaking, support for the ruling Morena party and Claudia Sheinbaum has remained steady due to the reforms they’ve implemented. Roughly 350,000 people took to the streets in Mexico City in early March to protest Trump’s tariffs, with the action being called by Morena and Sheinbaum. It was less a protest and more a rally to ramp up Mexican nationalism, a tactic that won’t save working people from the attacks by the ruling elite. At the rally, Sheinbaum called for Mexicans to “keep a cool head” and not even bring posters or effigies of Trump to protest the actions of the administration. This only serves to cut across the protest movement that could exist in Mexico as this trade war leans in the direction of escalation. As of yet, Sheinbaum’s austerity budget hasn’t driven working people into action against it, with Trump providing cover for it through his own economic attacks on the people of Mexico.
That said, in Mexican immigrant communities there has been a smaller protest movement of those out against Trump and his right-wing agenda. In San Matteo, Fort Bragg, and other US cities along the border where both Mexicans and Mexican-Americans have created homes for themselves there has been a ramping up of protests not only against the tariffs and attacks on Mexico, but against the ramping up of anti-immigrant rhetoric in the United States. The protests are very explicitly anti-Trump with poster slogans such as “MAGA: Mexican’s Ain’t Going Anywhere” and “I drink my horchata warm because fuck ICE!”
Ahead of International Women’s Day on March 8, there was a slight ramping up of protests in Mexico as cuts as high as 4% to social services have been announced in just the first few months of Sheinbaum’s presidency. These services include protections for women, something desperately needed in the country with some of the highest recorded femicide rates. Over 500 women were killed in January alone in Mexico, over half of those specifically tied to femicide.
Where Does Mexico Go From Here?
Unions, student groups, the feminist movement, and all working people in Mexico will need to join forces in mass action to disrupt business as usual in order to push back Trump’s agenda and to win any of the reforms Sheinbaum campaigned on. The Mexican labor movement took some steps towards more democratic, fighting unions over the past few years, though that has not yet cohered into an organized national fight to build unions that can truly take on the bosses.
Sheinbaum has made big promises to working people, but at the same time has paved the way to be seen as a more “business-friendly” successor to AMLO. In the context of Trump’s destructive impact on Mexico’s economy, Sheinbaum will have even less room to grant concessions to the working class as she attempts to balance between their interests and the interests of big business. That means that any significant reforms – such as the expansion of social services, legalization of reproductive rights in all Mexican states, and making Mexico livable for citizens and asylum-seekers alike – will be even harder fought than in the past. Tinkering here and there with the budget won’t cut it. The working class must call on Morena to renationalize key industries, take a stand against Trump and right-wing ideas, and implement a tax on the rich. Protests, workplace and school walkouts, and other escalating actions will be necessary to ensure that the working class does not bear the burden of Trump’s tariffs.
Similarly, movements in the United States must connect with those in Mexico. Every single working person is impacted by the tariffs and trade wars – to fight back, the working class must implement cross-border actions similar to what we just saw between Detroit and Windsor in protest of the calls to make Canada the fifty-first state. United, the working class is so much stronger. We have far more in common across the borders with each other than we ever will with the ruling capitalist class of each country.