Impact of the illegal migrant tide on the new NAFTA - the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade
 When unauthorised US-Mexican border crossings hit 100,000 a month, former Obama Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson admitted that the situation had become an "urgent national crisis".
Such statement coming from such a man pretty much silenced Democratic Party screaming that this was a "fake emergency". Yet never-Trumper media critics persisted in saying with ill-concealed delight that Trump's threats delivered via twitter had left him hopelessly trapped.
Little logic underpinned such assertions, typified by a fulminating headline in the Washington Post: "Trump's convoluted, confused threat to impose new tariffs on Mexico".
While the report below the disparaging headline plainly said why US President Donald Trump thinks his scheme will work, the Washington Post journalist says such a stance was ridiculous because he had previously given undertakings not to resort to such measures.
So what? When a neighbour's actions or inactions threaten one's wellbeing, is not one entitled to drop the Mr Nice Guy understandings of the past that one would have upheld in more agreeable times.
Those who subscribe to contrary notions would be well advised to check out those old 1970s Dirty Harry movies with Clint Eastwood to reacquaint themselves with an older morality to which President Trump is more likely to subscribe as would his loyal supporters.
When even Obama era officials agree that the border crisis is a true national emergency, a Dirty Harry approach that would not be justified if it were not the case, becomes justified when it is.
Given this change in general appreciation of what constitutes a "national emergency", the Democrats and their media had best understand that the non-vegetarian school of thought has a following that encompasses at least 50 per cent of the population, that is to say, the 50 per cent of which they are not a part and appear to assume does not exist despite the fact that it wins elections from time to time.
Thus, the Washington Post story, which typifies so many others, is this: First President Trump tweeted: "Mexico, for the first time in decades, is meaningfully apprehending illegals at THEIR southern border, before the long march up to the US. This is great and the way it should be."
"However," he added in the next tweet, "if for any reason Mexico stops apprehending and bringing the illegals back to where they came from, the US will be forced to tariff at 25 per cent on all cars made in Mexico and shipped over the border to us. If that doesn't work, which it will, I will close the border."
Trouble is, says the Washington Post, the United States already agreed that it wouldn't do any such thing in the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), a trade deal that made modest changes to NAFTA. The new deal will probably go before Congress for ratification this year. The agreement also included several side letters, one of which, already in effect, explicitly exempts Canada and Mexico from tariffs imposed by the United States on as many as 2.6 million vehicles imported into the United States each year.
"This wasn't an accident," says the Washington Post. "Trump's threat 'is the exact scenario that the Mexican negotiating team predicted and secured protections from in the USMCA,' trade lawyer Daniel Ujczo told the Associated Press. 'Mexico Trump-and-Tweet-proofed its auto sector,' he said, adding that Trump 'would need to get very creative to impose auto tariffs on Mexico' in light of that agreement."
To give the devil his due, the Washington Post even reported the president's defence, that is, reasons why he is not bound by such promises - which in the journalist's eyes - would make imposing tariffs on Mexico impossible.
"How would you put a tariff when your own agreement precludes that?"
Said President Trump: "We haven't finished our agreement yet."
That is, the agreement isn't in force yet. Canada won't ratify until the US is more welcoming to its aluminum and House Democrats won't ratify until Mexican workers' rights are better protected. For reasons of their own, the parties are dragging their feet on ratification. These delays are supposed to frustrate President Trump in making his NAFTA re-write a done deal. But who can blame him for finding a silver lining to one of the many clouds overhead.
That alone is a slam-dunk refutation of the Washington Post criticism, because an unratified treaty is not a treaty at all. Promises made attendant to that treaty have not yet come into force and are deemed to not exist until the treaty itself is ratified.
Yet that response does not fully answer the case. That's because, having 100,000 people a month crashing across one's borders leaves little option than shooting them to stop the flow, or at the very least justifies other unpleasant measures to meet the situation, now fairly called a "crisis" or "national emergency".
One can understand Democrats who delight in these situations if they only torment a president they loathe. But they cannot get away with saying that counter measures cannot be taken when they can be legally and morally sidestep traps simply because those that delight in them find such evasive tactics morally repugnant. |
