The right-wing presidents of Argentina and El Salvador cheer. Javier Milei managed to fulfill his large dream: he was the first president in Latin America to make a selfie with Donald Trump. To this end, the Argentine went to the States – just after the Republican won the election on November 5. Both posed with their thumbs out, just as Milei likes the most, Trump congratulated him on making Argentina “great again”.
However, the joy of the right may be shortsighted – Trump's reserved duties and deportations will besides affect countries governed by his sympathizers.
It'll most likely hurt Mexico the most.
Bible Plague
"Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States" – these words, spoken by Mexican dictator Porfiria Díaz over a 100 years ago, sound very today.
Because it's Mexico that Trump promises to send down biblical plagues. Firstly, the ban duties on Mexican products, contrary to the free trade agreement between the 2 countries. Secondly, bombing cocaine cartel bases in Mexico, and so no less, no more, only military intervention in another country. Third: deportations of millions of people Trump calls "foreign" or "foreign" (aliens).
How many millions “foreign” are we talking about? I don't know. During the campaign, Trump raced to conquer this number himself. From the million people who came Vice president J.D. Vance He promised to "give out from the US immediately", to 11, 15 or even 23 million, which appeared in the statements of the future president.
People surviving in the United States without a permanent residence licence are about 11 million. Almost half of them are Mexicans.
In entries published on his own platform TruthSocial Trump combines all 3 subjects: customs, migration and drugs.
Dam duties – 25 percent for “all” products imported from Mexico – will stay in force until “drugs, especially fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens halt this invasion of our country!” – first spelling.
As with the celebrated radio sound strategy World War Orson Welles, aired on Halloween 1938, many of the millions of listeners were incapable to separate between fact and fiction and believed that the Earth had truly been attacked by aliens, and present many Americans believe in the “invasion of strangers”.
Customs duty
What does Mexico say? Left-wing president Claudia Sheinbaum announced that if Trump introduces barrage duties on Mexican products, her country will so respond – an eye for an eye, a customs duty.
Sheinbaum besides stresses that Mexico is increasingly effectively controlling migration from Central America to the States. The number of illegal border crossings between Mexico and the U.S. in the last year has declined sharply, as authoritative statistic show – Sheinbaum sent them to Trump by letter.
In the discussion on drugs, which Trump argues, Mexico floods the United States, Sheinbaum stresses that its country is not their consumer, for which it pays a immense price in the form of force linked to drug crime, which consumes more and more lives. The president besides notes that as much as 70 percent of illegal weapons confiscated in Mexico come from the US.
"We don't make guns, we don't usage synthetic drugs. Unfortunately, drug trafficking kills our people to meet request in your country," Sheinbaum said at a press conference, addressing Trump directly.
My Mexican friends don't believe in Republican threats. “What barrage duties there are, the American religion is, “to make it cheap,” says Rodrigo Reyes, the movie manager on the phone. - Expel millions? The people who voted for Trump were delighted with the slogans about mass deportations, but I don't think he was going to implement the idea. Deporting so many people would be besides complicated and against the law, says Reyes.
Reyes was born in Mexico, lives in the United States. He shot, among another things, Purgatory – a documentary about the border between the US and Mexico, which he himself crossed for the first time as an illegal immigrant. He explains that in fresh years his homeland and the States have successfully worked together on border control and migration.
– The boundary between the US and Mexico in practice is presently in Chiapas, confederate Mexico. Mexican authorities frequently halt people right there, not allowing them to scope the real border with the States," Reyes says. In his opinion, this cooperation will be discontinued if the US makes demands to Mexico without offering anything in return.
"I believe that erstwhile Trump takes office, he will show restraint in his actions," writes a friend Gabriel Mejía Pérez.
Mejía lives in Mexico City, runs a tiny bicycle store there.
"Mexico relations are strategical for the US. Trump will not just throw them in the basket," he says. He adds: "Of course, he will insist that the topics that are priorities in his communicative be discussed in the region as the most crucial ones."
There's nothing to be afraid of.
I personally see any crucial reasons for concern. 1 of them is the appointment of Thomas Homan to the position of a “border car”. Homan led the ICE borderers during Trump's first term. He was the 1 who approved the controversial initiative of separating immigrant parents and children after crossing the border from Mexico to the US.
In the customs war, Mexico has the most to lose. about 80% of its goods are exported to the US and are dependent on trade with its northern neighbour to a much greater degree than vice versa.
Following Trump's second win, Venezuela and Cuba lost hope that US economical sanctions imposed on them would be abolished in the coming years. Cuba is besides inactive on the American list of "terrorist sponsor countries", from which he promised to remove it from Biden, but I think he forgot.
On the island, it is no longer believed that tourists from the States will return. They will not return due to the fact that they are not allowed to travel to “terror-sponsor countries”. Besides, neither do we – if we would like to enter the States as part of the Visaless Movement Program, staying in Cuba after 2021 will prevent this from happening.
Cuba does not peculiarly care about Trump, but Marco Rubio has chosen as Secretary of State, who has Cuban roots and is simply a supporter of the strongest policy towards the island.
Other leftist governments fear Trump will punish them for Israel's harsh criticism of war crimes in Gaza and even contribute to the destabilisation of the region.
When in January 2024 in Guatemala the local right tried to prevent a democratic shift in watch, Biden's envoys tirelessly worked behind the scenes so that the progressive winner Bernardo Arévalo could take over. Meanwhile, people closely associated with Trump spread conspiracy theories about falsified elections. Today, Guatemala's right feels the wind blowing its sails.
As early as February 2025, the first circular of elections in Ecuador. If the left – as many forecasts foretell – wins a minimal triumph and the right will not accept it, refusing to quit power, Trump could step in.
But my Mexican friends don't want to worry besides much. Rodrigo Reyes admits, however, that it is hard for him to think of "another 4 years with this asshole (cabrón) in the White House".
