The United States is a giant with very little tolerance for anything it considers contrary to its interests or an attack on its national security. It defends its interests – natural resources, investments, trade with other countries – with political pressure, followed by tariff measures, and if that does not work, it resorts to direct intervention, which can be armed.
Democrats and Republicans alike follow the same principles. Trump warned that if he were president, he would impose 200 percent tariffs on Chinese cars produced in Mexico to prevent such investments from prospering in our country, but in 2015, Barack Obama pressured Peña Nieto to cancel the construction of the fast train that would link Mexico City with Querétaro, the tender for which had been won by a consortium headed by China Railway.
It is obvious that Mexico is involved in the dispute that the United States opened with China to defend its hegemony against the Asian giant; for the moment, this conflict remains outside the military field. Trump in his presidential term and Biden defined it as the permanence of its predominance over China in technology and trade of products such as microprocessors and biotechnology derivatives; the role of the dollar as a universal currency is also at stake.
As long as China does not acquire technological supremacy in these fields, the United States will continue its confrontation with tariff strategies and political pressures on countries that make financial and commercial deals with Beijing, as is the case in almost all of Africa and a large part of Latin America. These pressures are responsible for Milei’s victory in Argentina and the legal proceedings against presidents of other countries.
Mexican governments, including that of López Obrador, have assumed that their foreign policy is constrained to “what suits” Washington; this understanding with Mexico has had the FTA as the framework for a North American regional alliance on investment and trade since 1994.
Although Trump says he is against the USMCA, he would not do anything to harm the transnational corporations that have set up shop in Mexico to take advantage of low costs, and which are the largest exporters to the US market, but he would undoubtedly want to thoroughly reinforce what will serve his technological and commercial strategy against China.
Where Trump would be most dangerous for Mexico is on the military front; he and many Republicans believe that Mexican cartels have caused more deaths of young Americans than international terrorism, which is why, they argue, these criminal organizations should be classified as terrorists.
The Patriot Act of 2001 and the Victory Act of 2003 allow the government to conduct surveillance and send troops anywhere under pretexts such as counterterrorism, which it used in Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001, attack on the Twin Towers, or destroying weapons of mass impact — which turned out not to exist — in order to enter Iraq in 2003 and overthrow Saddam Hussein.
There have also been concerted interventions with national governments, such as the one agreed upon in 1999 by Presidents Clinton and Pastrana to “combat drug trafficking, strengthen institutions, peace and development in Colombia”; Plan Colombia was developed in the presence of military advisors from Washington, which has given rise to versions about the permanence of eight US military bases in the South American country, which is officially denied. What is a fact is that the drug trafficking business remains unscathed – perhaps more orderly – in that country.
Trump is talking about sending in the US military to wipe out the Mexican cartels; campaign language, but it is quite possible that if he takes over the White House, he will try to agree with Claudia Sheinbaum’s government on a joint plan to subject these criminal organizations to the rules of the business.
