These Products Will Be Affected By Trump's Tariffs On Mexico/Canada

 The following is from Newsweek:

If the tariffs are imposed, they could cost Americans an estimated $78 billion annually, NBC News reported, with everyday goods costing more.

Below are the seven major product categories that would be most affected.

Automobiles and Automotive Parts

Canada and Mexico are major suppliers of vehicles and parts, and many cars sold in the U.S. are assembled in those countries or use components sourced from them. Analysts have estimated that a tariff could add $1,000 to $5,000 to the price of a new car, with parts such as engines, transmissions and tires becoming more expensive. Replacement parts would also become more expensive because of the tariffs.

Agricultural Products

Canada and Mexico are also significant exporters of agricultural goods to the U.S., including fruits, vegetables, meat and dairy. A 25 percent tariff would make everyday staples such as avocados, tomatoes, beef and cheese more expensive for U.S. consumers.

Canadian beef exports across all markets are projected to total 595,000 tons this year, with about 80 percent destined for U.S. customers. Last year, the U.S. imported $2.7 billion worth of avocados from Mexico, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported.

Electronics

Many electronics—including smartphones—are assembled in Mexico or rely on components manufactured there. Tariffs on electronics could lead to higher prices for consumer goods, especially devices such as TVs, laptops and home appliances that rely on Mexican manufacturing.

Mineral Fuels and Oils

Canada is the largest exporter of crude oil and refined petroleum to the U.S. A 25 percent tariff would increase fuel costs, affecting gas prices and heating oil. This means consumers would likely see higher prices at the pump, with several cents per gallon being added to gasoline and diesel prices.

Plastics and Plastic Products

Canada and Mexico supply a significant amount of plastic materials and products used in packaging, construction and consumer goods. Tariffs would raise costs for businesses and consumers across industries that rely on plastic.

Machinery and Industrial Equipment

Canada and Mexico also export heavy machinery, engines and industrial tools used in manufacturing and construction.

If Trump's tariffs are imposed, U.S. industries will face higher costs for equipment, such as industrial machinery, boilers and electrical equipment. The higher costs could slow down construction and manufacturing projects, which in turn could hit companies in those industries.

"If you voted for Trump because you thought he was going to bring down the cost of housing, a lot of our lumber, cement and other materials comes from Canada, which means that construction costs are going to go up," commentator Catherine Rampell said on CNN on Monday.

Aluminum and Steel Products

Canada is a top supplier of aluminum and steel, which are essential for construction, automotive manufacturing and packaging. Tariffs would raise the cost of raw materials, affecting industries that use these metals and even products such as soda cans.

Mexico Joins List Of Nations Electing A Woman Leader

 On Sunday, Mexico joined the long list of nations that have elected a woman to lead then. Below is the list of nations that had previously done so.

NOTE - The United States is still NOT on the list!

Republican Extremists Now Want To Bomb Mexico

The following is part of an op-ed in The Washington Post by Greg Sargent:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has declared that he’s prepared to authorize drone strikes against drug cartels in Mexico. Bedecked in military-looking garb at the border, he recently vowed to blockade Mexican ports. DeSantis is not alone: Many MAGA-fied Republicans are demanding stepped-up military action against the flow of fentanyl — including inside Mexico, without that country’s assent.

This talk isn’t just insanely reckless. It also exposes a profound absurdity embedded in the MAGA worldview, one that treats migration to the United States as a security problem to be “solved” with maximal force, not a hemispheric challenge that requires international cooperation and diplomacy. . . .

True, Republicans sometimes say they’ll seek Mexico’s permission to wage war on its soil. The idea of more U.S.-Mexico law enforcement cooperation against drug cartels is not inherently problematic. But other times, Republicans tout the threat of waging military action without Mexico’s consent as a badge of their own toughness.

Last week, for instance, DeSantis answered “yes” when an Iowa voter asked whether he’d use drones to “take out” cartels in Mexico. If Mexico won’t help, DeSantis continued, the United States will “do what we have to do.” And his suggestion of naval blockades to prevent precursor chemicals from entering Mexican ports comes with a hint that the action would be unilateral if Mexico “drags its feet.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) has proposed sending in Special Operations forces and said if Mexico doesn’t want to help, “so be it.” Fox News’s Greg Gutfeld wants the United States to “bomb Mexico,” meaning the cartels, even “if Mexico won’t agree.”

As David Frum writes for the Atlantic, such talk addresses a political problem for Republicans. Huge numbers of the opioid epidemic’s victims are rural and White, and a broader domestic crackdown might demonize or criminalize many GOP constituents; threatening Mexico instead spins a tale of “virtuous middle-Americans beset by alien villains.”

But that tale runs into a problem. DeSantis recently said he would reinstate “Remain in Mexico” as the primary way of disincentivizing migrants from seeking asylum in the United States. . . .

It might be argued that “bomb Mexico” talk could exert more pressure on Mexico to restart the policy if the next U.S. president demands it. But, with Mexico’s leftist president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador,regularly lambasting DeSantis’s anti-immigrant policies, GOP war fever will make it politically harder for Mexico to acquiesce, said Bárcena, who was ambassador during “Remain in Mexico” under Trump.

“All cooperation will be less likely if the Republican candidates continue with the threat of use of force,” Bárcena said, as Mexicans will criticize Obrador for “yielding to the U.S.”. . .

But to DeSantis and MAGA, all that matters is whether we are “tough” enough. If we are, migrants will give up. DeSantis’s immigration blueprint says nothing meaningful about root causes of migration or how to address them through multilateral action, dismissing migration as an “invasion” and not a complex phenomenon with profound human rights implications.

Similarly, the fentanyl crisis has myriad complicated causes. As Ryan Cooper writes for the American Prospect, we’d do better to redouble treatment at home and beef up technology at ports of entry — where most fentanyl enters — rather than launch new military adventures south of the border.

But as long as the war-whooping thrills the MAGA masses, that alone counts as mission accomplished.

We Must Cut Off The Gun Pipeline To Mexican Cartels

The best way to defeat the Mexican cartels is to cut off their supply of guns -- most of which come from dealers and manufacturers in the United States. Here's how Jonathan Lowy and Luis Moreno describe this in The Washington Post: 

According to recent reports, former president Donald Trump is preparing battle plans to attack Mexico if he regains the White House. This is only the latest escalation of saber rattling in the wake of the recent kidnapping and killing of Americans in Mexico. Former U.S. attorney general William P. Barr, Rep. Dan Crenshaw, and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham are among those calling for U.S. military action in Mexico to take on drug cartels.

There is no debating the threat the cartels pose. The fentanyl they push is killing thousands on both sides of the border. In Mexico, they torture and kill journalists to silence them, battle law enforcement and the military, and terrorize civilians. Cartels are largely responsible for as many as 100,000 Mexicans who have been “disappeared” — kidnapped and probably killed — and the 20,000 confirmed killed every year. The violence is spurring migration at the U.S. border. And these transnational criminal organizations are spreading to the United States.

The cartels need to be stopped. But this is not a problem Washington can bomb its way out of. Sending in troops won’t help stop the violence and drug trafficking. There is, however, something the United States can do that would: cut off the gun pipeline that arms the cartels.

It’s shocking but not surprising that at least one of the guns used in the recent kidnapping was trafficked from the United States. Seventy to 90 percent of Mexican drug cartels’ guns are trafficked from U.S. gun stores, supplied by U.S. manufacturers and distributors.

Why do the cartels’ traffickers risk border crossings to get guns? Because Mexico has strong laws regulating gun sales and only one gun store, which restricts criminals from obtaining weapons there. But in the United States, federally licensed firearms dealers can sell dozens of AR-15s and AK-47s and thousands of rounds of ammunition to purchasers without even asking why a buyer would want such an arsenal. Manufacturers continue to supply these dealers despite their dangerous practices, even though the U.S. Justice Department told them to self-police their distribution chain more than 20 years ago.

Money and guns from the United States drive the deadly violence and drug trafficking in Mexico. The money the cartels use to pay for the guns comes largely from their sale of illegal drugs to buyers in the United States. The cartels and the gun industry profit from this deadly trade, while hundreds of thousands suffer.

What has Congress done about it? In 2004, it failed to renew the 10-year ban on assault weapons, which made it possible to recklessly sell them to traffickers. A study found that for both of the two years that followed, there was a 60 percent spike in homicides in Mexico near the border. And mass shootings in the United States tripled since the ban lapsed.

In 2005, Congress passed a law to shield bad actors in the gun industry from accountability for the harm they cause. Gun manufacturers Barrett and Browning make and sell to civilians .50-caliber sniper rifles that can pierce armor and shoot down helicopters. U.S. law enforcement focuses on arresting traffickers, who are easily replaced. But it refuses to take on the U.S. gun industry, which is the source of the weapons used by criminals in Mexico and the United States.

If those who call for military intervention in Mexico truly want to stop the cartels, they should support a ban on assault weapons and bulk sales, and greater accountability and enforcement against gun companies that supply cross-border traffickers. The Biden administration should also crack down on dangerous industry practices.

Instead, the “send in the troops” politicians support policies that enable cartels to amass arsenals. After assault weapons were used to kill 19 children and two adults in Uvalde, 23 people in El Paso (including eight Mexicans) and 26 in Sutherland Springs — all in his home state of Texas — Crenshaw opposed requiring background checks for all gun sales, even though nearly 90 percent of Americans support them.

There is serious policy, and then there’s political bluster. When it comes to the fentanyl crisis and violence in Mexico, there has lately been too much of the latter and not enough of the former. Reforming the gun industry to stop the crime gun pipeline is a serious and necessary solution to this ongoing emergency.

Republican Care About Immigrant Crime Is Only Skin Deep

It turns out that the attacker of Mr. Pelosi was an undocumented immigrant, but we're hearing nothing about that from Republicans. Could it be that they only care about immigrant crime when the perp is not white?

Here's Nayyera Haq's take on this at MSNBC.com:

After years of anti-immigrant, “Build the Wall” rhetoric, we have seen one of the highest-profile examples of someone who was in the United States illegally committing an act of shocking violence. We learned this week that the man who took a hammer to the head of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 82-year-old husband was undocumented, here on an expired temporary visitor visa, and radicalized online. And the attacker is part of one of the largest populations in the United States illegally: Canadians. 

The Republican Party has used anti-immigrant rhetoric against Latinos and Hispanics for years, making sure it remains a potent topic for voters in the midterm elections. Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters has made so-called illegal immigration a centerpiece of his campaign but has been silent on the attack on Paul Pelosi. New Hampshire Senate candidate Don Bolduc, who wants to continue Title 42 public health restrictions at the southern border despite President Joe Biden declaring the pandemic over, did issue prayers to the Pelosi family saying “violence is never the answer.” But neither of them, nor any other political leader, is seizing on this crime committed by a supposed “illegal immigrant” to start deporting Canadians.

This is not a Blame Canada shtick. This is the reality: In the past 10 years, visa overstays in the United States outnumbered illegal border crossings by a 2:1 ratio. It’s a trend that’s been growing since 2004, with more than 600,000 people on average living illegally in the United States each year after their visas expired, according to the Department of Homeland Security. After former President Donald Trump’s first year in office, DHS released a report showing that the largest group of people who overstay their official welcome in the United States come from across the northern border. . . .

The difference in perception Americans have between Canadians and Mexicans has significant policy and political implications. American cultural demonization of Canadians is limited to comedians cracking jokes about Justin Bieber and saying “eh?” repeatedly. The trope for Canadians is that they’re too nice while our neighbors to the south have been the target of rape and drug cartel jokes for years. Trump launched his campaign on the back of these stereotypes, saying,“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. ... They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”

When Trump called for the creation of a deportation forceand promised to expel 2 million to 3 million undocumented people, there was little surprise that law enforcement targeted people from Central and South America. The disparity in enforcement was still dramatic: In 2017, DHS reported 350 Canadians were deported compared with nearly 130,000 Mexican nationals. . . .

Despite the use of law-and-order rhetoric when it comes to immigration, the political right is specific about which undocumented people get labeled as criminals. Overstaying a visa is currently punishable with up to four years of jail time and a 10 year ban from the United States. But even after this week’s revelations that an egregious act of political violence was committed by someone conservatives would normally term an “illegal immigrant,” there will be no new constituency for deporting Canadians or political railing against Canadians as a criminal monolith.

The constituency that votes based on curbing illegal immigration is not really worried about making sure people don’t take advantage of American laws and generosity. If they were, the policy solutions would be entirely different. We’d see calls for Canadians to enter with visas and for greater data sharing with Canadian authorities for cross-border prosecutions. Both of which are part of the many immigration-related policies DHS has in place with Mexico and countries south of the border. 

Voters that Republicans are courting with their immigration rhetoric are really worried about American identity looking and feeling a certain way. For these voters, their identity cannot be shared with brown day laborers or families willing to risk death to come to the United States. This is the real promise of Trumpism and why immigration holds such a key place in its ideology. That its adherents would mock Pelosi as the latest liberal avatar to be torn down, rather than a near martyr in their crusade, shows that concern about immigrant crime is only skin deep.

The Real Reasons Cruz Returned From Mexico (Satire)

Senator Ted Cruz committed a giant political blunder. While his fellow Texans were suffering without heat in a below zero winter storm, Cruz and his family flew to Cancun in Mexico (where it was a balmy 80 degrees. He returned after one day there, saying he just took his family there and really wanted to be in Texas to help his constituents. No one believes that. He returned because he was being roasted in the media (and had become a joke on social media).

With her tongue firmly planted in her cheek, Eva Raggio of the Dallas Observer has "discovered" the real reasons Cruz returned from Mexico. She writes:

Through some relentless independent research, however, we were able to find the real reasons Cruz returned to Texas.

1. He’d forgotten to bring his “I really don’t care do you? “ jacket.

2. His all-inclusive hotel didn’t include free porn.

3. He got an alert for an Amazon package arrival and didn’t want to risk it getting stolen.

4. He was really on a secret plastic surgery trip but the doctors said they could not make him look “more like Stormy Daniels.”

5. He forgot he left his garage door open.

6. He couldn’t find a Taco Bell in Mexico. Or any “Tex-Mex.”

7. He got mad when someone mistook him for a worm from a tequila bottle.

8. The hotel manager refused to have staff fold the towels into the shape of baby elephants.

9. He was triggered when he watched The Mandalorian on the flight there and was reminded that Gina Carano was kicked off the show. 

10. His suite update was canceled, and he’s against cancel culture. 

11. He forgot that Mexico also had coronavirus.

12. He'd read a sign on the airport that said he was "duty free," but then later learned he'd misunderstood.

13. He couldn’t find a hairdresser who’d refused to shut her salon during lockdowns.

14. He didn’t realize people wanted him to do his job when he’s consistently asked to resign.

15. He wanted to watch the Rover landing and couldn’t find reliable Wi-Fi.

16. He couldn't take more sun because he was sufficiently roasted on the internet.

17. Mexico didn’t want him there.

18. His family didn’t want him there.

Don't Believe The Hype - Trump Backed Down (Again)

(The caricature of Donald Trump is by DonkeyHotey.)

With only a couple of days to go before his tariffs on all Mexican products were to begin, Trump declared victory and claimed he had negotiated a great deal with Mexico.

That's just another Trump lie. The truth is that nothing new was gained through the last minute negotiating. Everything Trump claimed he got was already agreed to by Mexico long ago. Trump just chickened out and backed down because he finally realized his stupid tariff was opposed by most people (even the people in his own party).

Here's part of how The New York Times describes Trump's latest attempt to claim a false victory:

The deal to avert tariffs that President Trump announced with great fanfare on Friday night consists largely of actions that Mexico had already promised to take in prior discussions with the United States over the past several months, according to officials from both countries who are familiar with the negotiations.

Friday’s joint declaration says Mexico agreed to the “deployment of its National Guard throughout Mexico, giving priority to its southern border.” But the Mexican government had already pledged to do that in March during secret talks in Miami between Kirstjen Nielsen, then the secretary of homeland security, and Olga Sanchez, the Mexican secretary of the interior, the officials said.

The centerpiece of Mr. Trump’s deal was an expansion of a program to allow asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico while their legal cases proceed. But that arrangement was reached in December in a pair of painstakingly negotiated diplomatic notes that the two countries exchanged. Ms. Nielsen announced the Migrant Protection Protocols during a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee five days before Christmas.

And over the past week, negotiators failed to persuade Mexico to accept a “safe third country” treaty that would have given the United States the legal ability to reject asylum seekers if they had not sought refuge in Mexico first. . . .

Having threatened Mexico with an escalating series of tariffs — starting at 5 percent and growing to 25 percent — the president faced enormous criticism from global leaders, business executives, Republican and Democratic lawmakers, and members of his own staff that he risked disrupting a critical marketplace.

After nine days of uncertainty, Mr. Trump backed down and accepted Mexico’s promises.

Trump Tariffs Are A Huge Tax On American Consumers

Donald Trump is still trying to tell Americans that his tariffs on China and Mexico are paid by those nations. Only a moron would believe that. Those tariffs are paid by American importers, and then passed on through higher prices to American consumers. In other words, it's a huge tax hike on Americans.

How big a tax hike is it? With only the 5% tariff on Mexico and the current tariff on China, it would be the largest tax hike on Americans in nearly three decades. And if the tariff on Mexico rises to 25%, as Trump proposed, it would be the largest tax hike on Americans in over five decades.

Here's how Zack Budryk describes the new tax on Americans in The Hill:

President Trump’s proposed tariffs on Mexican imports – an effort to pressure the country to halt the flow of migrants from Central America – could constitute the biggest tax hike on American consumers in nearly three decades, according to an analysis by the Tax Foundation.

The 5 percent tariff on Mexican goods is set to take effect June 10 and steadily increase until it reaches 25 percent “unless and until Mexico substantially stops the illegal inflow of aliens coming through its territory,” according to a statement from the White House Thursday.

Existing tariffs in place against Mexico would increase revenues by $69 billion, or about 0.32 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), according to the right-leaning Tax Foundation. The 5 percent tariff would increase this figure to about 0.40 percent of GDP. Tax increases under then-President Bill Clinton in 1993 led to revenues of about 0.36 percent of GDP, according to the Tax Foundation.

“The Tax Foundation model estimates that if the Trump administration imposes additional tariffs on automobiles and parts, additional tariffs on products from China, and tariffs on products from Mexico, GDP would fall by an additional 0.50 percent ($124.82 billion), resulting in 0.33 percent lower wages and 387,041 fewer full-time equivalent jobs,” the foundation states.

The Tax Foundation’s estimates only apply to the initial 5 percent tariffs. If the White House makes good on its threats of 25 percent on all Chinese and Mexican imports, the revenues would reach 1.45 percent of GDP, a figure last reached after a 1968 tax increase, according to the Treasury Department.

Trump Proposes Another Hidden Tax On U.S. Consumers

Donald Trump was not happy with just putting a hidden tax on American consumers by placing tariffs on products from China. Now he is proposing substantial tariffs on Mexican products. He will place a 5% tariff on June 10th, and raise that tariff by 5% each month until it reaches 25% in October. He says the tariffs will last until Mexico effectively blocks Central American refugees from coming to the United States -- which Mexico has little control over.

Trump and his cohorts want you to believe that the new tariffs on both China and Mexico will be paid by those countries. That is a huge lie. The tariffs are paid by the U.S. companies that import Chinese and Mexican products, and are then passed on to U.S. consumers in the form of higher prices. Not a single penny will come out of the Mexican and Chinese treasuries to pay these tariffs.

These new tariffs are stupid, and will do nothing to stop refugees from trying to come to this country.

Catherine Rampell, in The Washington Post, gives us 10 reasons why these new tariffs are "mind-bogglingly stupid":

1. Americans are paying these tariffs. We already have two studies by teams of top-notch trade economists who have found that the costs of Trump’s earlier tariffs are being passed along to American businesses and consumers. An update of one of those studies pegged the cost of tariffs announced before Thursday (including the most recent escalation on $200 billion of Chinese goods) at $831 per U.S. household. It seems reasonable that this latest round of tariffs on Mexican goods will also be largely absorbed by Americans.

2. This will seriously screw up supply chains and hurt American companies — including American companies that need Mexican parts to make their own products that get sold here or exported abroad.

Mexico recently became our No. 1 trading partner. Two-thirds of our imports from Mexico are intra-company trade (i.e., a firm trading with itself across the border).

The auto industry is especially vulnerable; of U.S. auto exports, about 35 percent of the value-added comes from imported inputs, according to Deutsche Bank Securities chief economist Torsten Slok. Note also that the U.S. auto industry is already in trouble. Announced layoffs for the first four months of this year in autos are the highest since 2009, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

3. We don’t know the full economic cost of the tariffs, but it would be painful for the United States. Two years ago, a research and consulting firm calculated an estimate for the costs of a similar (20 percent) tariff on Mexican imports: “Over three years, the bill comes to $286 billion in lost value to the U.S. economy and a loss of 755,000 American jobs. Two-thirds of those job losses would be at the expense of low- to medium-skilled workers.”

4. It’s not clear the tariffs are legal. The White House said its legal justification for the tariffs is the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. This 1977 law is mostly related to sanctions; it has never been used for tariffs, according to the Congressional Research Service. Some trade lawyers have suggested that the law does not give the president power to unilaterally impose trade duties.

5. Mexico does not have power to do the thing Trump seems to be asking the country to do. He’s asking Mexico to block people from Central America from crossing into the United States to exercise their internationally recognized legal right to seek asylum.

6. There is no plan. There was never a plan. Even acting White House chief of staff (and Office of Management and Budget director, and apparently new Labor Department overlord) Mick Mulvaney acknowledged this in a call with reporters. When asked what it would take to remove the tariffs, he said the decision would be “ad hoc.”

7. This new self-inflicted trade-war wound gives us less leverage in negotiating a new trade deal with China (and the European Union and Japan, both of which we’re also simultaneously trade-warring with). The tariffs will damage our economy and encourage already suffering trade-dependent sectors — including agriculture and manufacturing — to place more pressure on the administration to reach a deal as soon as possible. Basically, it makes our stated willingness to absorb a little more trade-war-related pain less credible, since we’ve absorbed so much pain already.

8. It will also damage our ability to negotiate with China (and the E.U. and Japan) because it proves, once again, that Trump can’t be trusted to keep his word, including in the form of a signed international agreement. 

Recall that Trump had previously said that his global steel and aluminum tariffs would stay on our friends in Canada and Mexico until a new North American Free Trade Agreement was signed. But after it was signed last fall, he still didn’t remove the tariffs. Finally, two weeks ago, under pressure from lawmakers, he did remove them ... only to turn around and announce fresh across-the-board tariffs on everything from Mexico.

Mexico negotiated the new NAFTA in good faith, and then was punished for it. Why would anyone ever make a deal with this president, one that required literally any concessions, given this track record?

9. The decision to impose tariffs — and thereby harm red-state farmers and manufacturers — could cause a rift with the Republican lawmakers who have been protecting him. To be sure, they’ve supported him through the trade wars so far. But at some point even they might break, especially if they think another trade war front could jeopardize their own reelection chances.

10. If Trump does indeed manage to wreck the Mexican economy, that would likely increase the flow of immigrants trying to cross the border into the United States. When the Mexican economy is lousy, after all, demand to come to the United States rises.

Texans Split Over The Wall - But Oppose National Emergency

The charts above reflect the results of a new Quinnipiac University Poll -- done between February 20th and 25th of a sample of 1,222 Texas voters, with a margin of error of 3.4 points.

The state of Texas has a 1,954 mile border with Mexico. That's far longer than any other state. It would make sense then, if any state suffered from the U.S. not having a wall between itself and Mexico, it would be Texas.

But that is not the case. Texas has a symbiotic relationship with Mexico -- a relationship that benefits both parties. And most Texans know that -- even though it is still a very red state.

As this poll shows, less than half of Texans (48%) want a border wall built, and an equal amount (48%) oppose building that wall. That's telling -- that a very red border state does not accept the fear mongering of Donald Trump.

It gets worse for Trump. A majority (52%) does not consider undocumented immigrants crossing the border to be a national emergency. A larger majority (60%) opposes Trump declaring a national emergency to build the wall. About 57% say the proposed wall would not decrease violent crime in the United States, and 54% say it would not decrease the amount of illegal drugs. And to cap it off, about 62% oppose seizing private property to build the wall.

Texans, who share the longest border with Mexico, know that Trump is just playing political games with the immigration issue.