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Trade was always the worry, wasn’t it?

Mexico may be forced to pay for the building of a wall between itself and America through an aggressive 20 per cent tax on all its exports to the United States, the White House said last night.

As Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto refused to fund the estimated $15 billion cost of the wall, and cancelled a visit to the US next week, President Donald Trump vowed to renegotiate the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement.

He said: “The US has a $60 billion dollar trade deficit with Mexico. It has been a one-sided deal from the beginning.”

His spokesman Sean Spicer later said there were plans to “tax imports from countries that we have a trade deficit from, like Mexico”.

He said: “If you tax $50 billion at 20 per cent of imports, by doing it that way we can do $10 billion a year and easily pay for the wall just through that mechanism alone. That’s really going to provide the funding.”

Mr Trump has discussed the proposal for a 20 per cent import tax on Mexican goods with Republican leaders in Congress, and wants it to be part of a comprehensive tax reform package.

That’s Americans paying for the wall then…..

17 thoughts on “Trade was always the worry, wasn’t it?”

  1. Makes for a good press release, but anyone who knows anything about the subject can see the actual incidence.

    It’s as if the good press release is more important than the actual stated aim, but that can’t be true, can it?

  2. From what we have seen to date, this is Trump’s opening shot in a negotiation. Quite were it will end up is unknown, but I suspect it will be nothing near to this.

  3. Yes incidence shows that Americans will pay for part of the wall at least. But there are wider imI cations, wider losses to be borne. A nation with a trade surplus cannot afford a tariff war.war.aerica would be the ‘winner’ of any such such war and Mexico the ‘loser’, given that war only in truth makes losers.

    And the EU would taking the most ridiculously suicidal course to embark on a tariff war with the UK. But then ridiculously suicidal courses of action are what the EU leaders choose to take, happily so.

  4. I can see why Trump doesn’t want the US overrun with Mexicans. But this whole trade war thing doesn’t make much sense, except as a way to scare the Mexicans into giving him what he wants, whatever that is, exactly.

    But I just don’t see why Mexico should have to pay for the fence. A country has a duty to keep foreigners out. It doesn’t have a duty to keep its citizens in. If Trump wants a wall, the US should pay for it.

    Also, I presume Trump doesn’t have the power to tear up trade deals and impose tariffs himself. Would anything like that get through Congress?

  5. So Much For Subtlety

    Cal – “But I just don’t see why Mexico should have to pay for the fence.”

    Mexico City is one of the largest consumers of bottled water in the world. More so than the US. Because the White people who run Mexico can’t be bothered to provide the Brown people who make up most of the population with clean water.

    Instead they push them over the border and make them America’s problem. Because it is too hard to run a decent economy or provide them with a reasonable education. Better to gradually Whiten the nation anyway. And perhaps reclaim California.

    Why should America pay for Mexican fecklessness?

  6. It’s rather more complicated, Tim, that you say, because if Mexican produce becomes 20% more expensive then that might just make it economic to produce the stuff in the US, or there could be somewhere else you can get it from.

    My solution would be to kick out all the illegals having asset-stripped them first.

  7. That’s Americans paying for the wall then…..

    Which was obviously always going to be the case as those that have the problem must deal with (and finance) the solution.

    Anyone who ever thought that Mexico was going to pay for the wall is deluded.

    Donald Trump saying that “Mexico was going to pay for the wall” was clearly nonsense and moreover he knew it. The reason he said it was that it played well with the voters which would get him elected, which it did.

    As for the trade implications, given the tariff based idiocy that Donald Trump claims to support (we’ll see about that though), the Wall is a drop in the ocean.

  8. “But I just don’t see why Mexico should have to pay for the fence. A country has a duty to keep foreigners out. It doesn’t have a duty to keep its citizens in.”

    It has a duty to make itself a country that its own people don’t want to flee from. It has a duty not to follow ruinous economic policies, and then rely on illegal remittances from neighbouring countries to cover the financial gap, propping up its own incompetence. It has a duty to provide its own citizens with the legal and economic environment they need to prosper, as they’re clearly capable of doing given that they can easily do so far more successfully across the border, despite all the obstacles their illegal status puts in their way.

    How bad do they have to be that being an illegal immigrant in the USA is actually better, more able to enable them to supply not only their own needs, but actually send part of their salary back home to support their family in Mexico? Mexico has a duty not to be such a hell-hole.

    What Trump ought to do is offer to take over the bit of Mexico near the border, and implement a US-style capitalist economy there that enables the Mexican workers to do what they currently do in the USA in Mexico. Instead of poor people moving to the US bringing their poverty-culture with them, have some rich people moving to Mexico bringing their prosperity-culture to the Mexicans.

    Have thousands of Americans cross the border illegally into Mexico, buy up all the local property, take over all the local businesses, refuse to pay taxes (they’re illegal immigrants, right?) or obey any local laws and regulations and challenge the Mexicans to arrest them and throw them out. If they do, they can hardly complain then if the Americans do the same.

  9. I’m not convinced by all these ‘It’s Mexico’s fault so they must pay’ arguments. Yes, Mexico is a pile of shit. But in the end, if you want to stop people coming in to your country, you run your own borders. And you deport illegals when they sneak in, instead of letting them stay.

  10. The US has been deporting illegals for decades. They keep entering the country and the country’s own governments help them.

  11. “I’m not convinced by all these ‘It’s Mexico’s fault so they must pay’ arguments.”

    Possibly you’re assuming it’s about some sort of international justice. This is populist politics.

    The Americans want Mexico to pay because they don’t want to pay a load more themselves to tidy up what they perceive as someone else’s mess. The government’s already paying too much. Trump wants to lower taxes, not raise them to pay for the wall.

    People look at it more simplistically. If your neighbour fills their garden with trash that the wind blows over the garden fence into your garden, and you’re not allowed to go round there and stop them (it’s their garden, they can do what they want to with it), you might instead propose erecting a higher garden fence so it can’t get across. Who should pay for it? The one running a trash dump in their garden, or the one who wants to keep their garden clean and tidy?

    Are people responsible for the harm their actions inadvertently cause to others? Some people think so.

    I don’t think it’s entirely clear. Would it make any difference if it was a bunch of trees over the fence, dropping their leaves in your nice neat garden? It’s an interesting question in moral philosophy.

  12. >The US has been deporting illegals for decades.

    Some of them. But millions get to stay.

    >They keep entering the country

    If they keep entering the country then your border’s not very good, is it?

    If they keep coming back, put them in jail. Provide a disincentive.

  13. “North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement”? Maybe if you folks can finish Brexit.

    I also read a weepy article today about the illegal immigrants from Haiti, Cuba, and points south, piling up in Mexico border towns were straining Mexican resources to help them. If only the US would let them in to take the pressure off all these illegal immigrants to Mexico!

  14. So the Obama administration deported around 400k illegal immigrants per year. Does anyone know if they get fined first, or just deported without having to pay for the trouble taken.
    A 250 dollar fine plus deportation would raise a notional $100m a year which should pay for a few km of fence upgrades, and decourager les autres .

  15. Don’t deport them, lock ’em up. Six months for being here illegally. Come back, make it a felony and two years. Come again, five years. Commit a crime while here? All crimes by illegals should be felonies. Even jaywalking.

    Create consequences for being here illegally. It’s what most nations do. Including MEXICO!

    Duh Wall is bullshit. We were fine without it for 200+ years. We don’t need one on the Canadian border. We are where we are now because of Washington’s inaction. Action will fix it.

    Maybe I should stop typing now. But . . . but . . .

    Let’s declare the Drug War won, and legalize whatever. Eliminate the FDA and the DEA. Let freedom ring! Drug cartel problems on the border will disappear overnight. There will be no money in drugs.No money, no cartels.

  16. There’s already existing arrangements on turning up in a country without proper paperwork where it’s the responsibility of the country you left from not the one you arrived at. So internationally there is a concept of you pay for the problem you caused.

  17. Shitty countries are shitty enough without us telling them they have the right, indeed the duty, to prevent anyone getting out. Remember East Germany? How they were bad for not letting people out?

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