President Trump has exempted Mexico from the tariffs he imposed a few days ago. From Reuters:
March 6 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday said Mexico won’t be required to pay tariffs on any goods that fall under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade until April 2, but made no mention of a reprieve for Canada despite his Commerce secretary saying a comparable exemption was likely.
“After speaking with President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico, I have agreed that Mexico will not be required to pay Tariffs on anything that falls under the USMCA Agreement,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “This Agreement is until April 2nd.”
Now I understand Trump’s rationale for tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods even less than I did before.
Brinkmanship? A redo of NAFTA? Shrug..
Actually the answer is its not a full rollback. Its only for categories of goods covered by USMCA and complies with its requirements to be duty free.
My surprise is the initial reports say only 50% of exports from both Canada and Mexico fall under this category. I assume this is roughly true of US exports to the two countries.
What is labelled as “free trade” is more like “half managed duty free trade”.
It also makes me wonder if it is time to have real continental free trade…. that would require killing a lot of sacred cows in all 3 countries.
The other thing is the tariffs on China. They aren’t being rolled back. My conspiracy belief is Trump is stirring the drama with Mexico, Canada because it can be rolled back and draws “markets attention” away from the Chinese tariffs. I expect the Chinese tariffs to reach Trump’s campaign promise of 60% in 10% increments per month.
Gilbert Doctorow, re criticism of Donald Trump’s first month in office:
“That type of criticism and kind of ad hominem argument is not acceptable. It is a polite form of slander. Donald Trump is often seen by many, many people in the States, and abroad, as a buffoon, a superficial person, someone who really isn’t capable of serious politics. He’s a businessman. He’s looking for his personal interest in this or that deal.
This is nonsense. In the last three weeks, we have seen Trump perform as one of the most skilled geopolitical actors on the face of the earth. He has been choreographing, or his people have choreographed for him the appearances of his most important and most capable assistants, like Rubio, like Witkoff, Hegseth.”
A New World Order is being born, and Trump is the midwife.
CuriousOnlooker:
You wrote:
That’s almost exactly what I wrote when NAFTA was first negotiated and it’s what bugs me about the defenses of the status quo. They’re not defending free trade. They’re defending managed trade.
And those defending the status quo are assuming, without a great deal of evidence, that the benefits of trade are linear and their distribution among income brackets is acceptable. I think it’s almost the opposite—half-managed dut free trade realizes less than half of the benefits of trade and the preponderance of those benefits are realized by the highest income earners.