Border Wall Blues: How Trump’s Attacks on Free Trade May Backfire
The United States has been an incredibly influential actor in Latin American politics ever since they took Texas from Mexico in the 1830s. In the century and a half after the U.S. would periodically lend their support to certain leaders and military coups, as they did successfully in Chile in 1973 and unsuccessfully in Cuba in 1961. The motivating factor of many of these interventions was the threat of communist expansion during the Cold War. However, the threat of communism diminished in the late 1980s and finally ended in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. With communist take-over in Latin America no longer a chief concern, the U.S., as the globe’s sole superpower, was able to maintain influence in Latin America by other means, mainly through economic policies. The U.S. accomplished this by establishing rules of free trade and economic policy that would go on to dramatically shape Latin America and the world.
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Peter Smith and Cameron Sells outline how this economic restructuring occurred in the chapter “Global Contexts, International Forces” from Democracy in Latin America. When an economic crisis hit Latin America in the 1980s the U.S. and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreed to lend “rescue packages” to suffering Latin American states, but these loans were given under the condition that recipient states restructure their economies to be more compatible with global trade. These measures included lowering tariffs and allowing the private sector to grow, which resulted in the reduced ability of Latin American government to address economic issues. These economic changes culminated in the creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). These free trade zones gave U.S. and international companies easier access to Latin American markets, labor, and resources. Another idea behind free trade purported that liberalizing the markets would liberalize the politics of Latin America and other regions around the world that had until then experienced touch and go democratization. While economic liberalization was carried out in the name of strengthening democracy and stabilizing economies in Latin America, Lesley Gill in her book The School of the Americas notes that these neoliberal policies led to cuts in social services, the privatization of public utilities, a growth in unemployment, and an increase in the gap between rich and poor. These policies mainly benefited the U.S. and the small, elite private sectors of Latin American states.
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Today, economic liberalization has come under attack by the Trump administration, not because of it’s harmful impact on Latin American states, but rather because of the perceived damage it has done to the U.S. Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was dominated by the notion that the U.S. was losing on trade deals with Mexico. Trump has spoken out harshly against U.S. automakers moving production to Mexico to cut costs, a practice only possible because of economic policies the U.S. initiated in the 90s. In recent days Trump has threatened to impose high tariffs on Mexican products in response to the Mexican government’s unwillingness to foot the bill for a border wall aimed at curbing illegal immigration. This could have incredibly damaging ramifications. Joshua Partow and David Agren write in a Washington Post article from this weekend, that 80 percent of Mexican products are sold in the U.S. and that Trump’s proposed tariff hikes could lead to a recession in Mexico encouraging even more migration northward. Partow and Agren also note that Mexico has played a major role in preventing migrants from Central America from illegally entering the U.S. The aggressive approach Trump is taking towards Mexico may put an end to this cooperation. Trump, by challenging NAFTA and unilaterally attempting to stop illegal immigration, may ultimately end up exacerbating the very problems he is attempting to resolve.
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(Photo: Nogales, Arizona border, retrieved from http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/tomdispatch-operation-streamline-immigration-enforcement-donald-trump-wall)