Mexico city – One day after President Trump's comprehensive tariffs came into force and ended for decades of free trade across North America, the Mexicans reacted with a mixture of fear and despite.
“There will be no submission,” said President Claudia Sheinbaum on Wednesday at her daily press conference. “Mexicans are brave and strong.”
Sheinbaum confirmed her plan to announce the measurement measures -including taxes on US imports during a public event in Mexico City on Sunday at a public event in Mexico. But she also seemed to hope that Trump could reverse the course beforehand and emphasized the comments by the US trade secretary Howard Lutnick that Trump could at least be withdrawn at least some of the tariffs on Wednesday.
The trucks are pending to cross the border to the United States, as the tariffs against Mexico come into force on Tuesday in Tuesday, Mexico.
(Gregory Bull / Associated Press)
Sheinbaum also said she hoped to be able to make calls with Trump this week.
At the border, the managing directors reported an immediate decline in the amount of goods that crossed north to the United States when companies wanted to avoid the new taxes on both sides.
There was a noticeable discomfort in the streets of the capital of the nation.
While the peso has largely kept against the dollar, there are real fears about what a trade war would mean for Mexico, whose economy depends heavily on the trade with the United States and sends 80% of its exports there.
Noah Espinosa, a 43-year-old dentist in Mexico City, said he was concerned about rising prices.
“Whatever Trump does, the dollar rises immediately and everything in Mexico is becoming more expensive,” said Espinosa. “The dollar rises and tortillas, the dollar rises and meat too.”
He said that many of the products he uses in his dental practice also come from the USA.
“The worst,” he said, “is that Trump does not care to destroy our economy and the economy of his own country as long as he feels like the most powerful man in the world.”
For many, the ghost brought back memories of another, in the mid -nineties, when the sudden devaluation of the peso triggered a severe recession and taught around 5 million Mexicans who hiked to the USA
“We lost everything from one day to the next,” said Ricardo Aguilar, 65, who has a hardware store in the Cuajimalpa district.
“Now that Trump makes these threats, these memories come back to my mind and let me cry,” said Aguilar. “You lose everything without economic stability: your health, your peace of mind. There is more violence; Everything becomes complicated. “
“I hope for God that we don't have to go through a crisis of this size again,” he said. “But Trump is very encouraged.”
The tariffs came into force on Tuesday morning. With the exception of Canadian oil and gas that is subject to a tariff of 10%, Washington began a tax of 25% for all products from Canadian oil and gas imported from Mexico and Canada. Trump also imposed a new tax of 10% on imports from China.
Canada and China immediately terminated retaliation tax on US goods. The Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the tariffs “very stupid” and Mexico said that his own counter-payer would soon be announced.
In conversation with the US Congress on Tuesday evening, Trump repeated a promise that he had earned earlier a day that he would react to retaliatory taxes with another tariff.
President Trump claps a joint congress meeting in the Capitol in Washington on Tuesday evening.
(Ben Curtis / Associated Press)
“Whatever you organize us, we depicted them,” he said. “Whatever you tax us, we tax you.”
Trump gave several reasons for the disease of tariffs: the river of illegal drugs and migrants across the US border; His wish to bring production back to America; His trouble about the retail weight that the United States has with the most nations.
“We have been demolished by almost every country on Earth for decades and will no longer allow it,” he said.
In Mexico there was deep frustration that Trump had not recognized the considerable efforts of the country in the past few months in terms of security and migration. Mexico has contributed to bringing illegal border crossings to the lowest values for years – and has increased seizures of fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that has caused tens of thousands of US deaths.
“Trump is a liar, he said there would be no tariffs if we hired migration,” said Maria Esther Garcia, 51, housewife.
She said she hoped that Sheinbaum would stop trying to appease the Americans.
“It is not of use because Trump is not a man of honor,” said Garcia. “President Sheinbaum shouldn't trust him. It is better for us to search for other countries for our Mexican avocados. ”
Jorge Lara, a 37-year-old computer technician, said that the Mexicans would be affected by tariffs, but American consumers would be more difficult to pay higher prices for agricultural goods soon.
He hoped that they would put Trump under pressure to reverse the course.
“As soon as the Americans start suffering from high prices in their country, they will react against their government, and Trump will have no choice but to eliminate taxes,” said Lara.
In his speech on Tuesday, Trump repeated his indictment that Mexico was completely under the influence of organized crime – an assertion that Sheinbaum repeated repeatedly as a cabin.
“The territory in the south of our border is now completely dominated by criminal cartels that have the total control of murder, rape, torture and exercise of all control,” Trump told Congress. “You have total control over an entire nation and represent a serious threat to our national security.”
Nevertheless, Trump praised the Mexican authorities last week for their decision to hand over 29 alleged cartel companies, including Rafael Caro Quintero, the alleged mastermind of the 1985 killing in Mexico of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Enrique “Kiki” Camarena.
The President combined the handover of the 29 suspects in the United States with his collective bargaining policy.
“That has never happened before. They want to make us happy. The first time of all time, ”Trump said about the decision of the Mexican officials to hand over the 29 suspects to the US criminal investigation authorities. “But we need Mexico and Canada to do a lot more than they have done, and they have to stop the fentanyl and drugs in the USA.”