It is not the first nor the only time that Donald Trump boasts that in the immigration issue He took everything he wanted from her MexicoHe has said it a thousand times, being president and his term ended. He said it in the first debate with Joe Biden (who yesterday was already out of the race) and he continues to say it in the campaign. And he says it because to a large extent it is true, even if it is a half truth.
It is evident that Trump was referring to Marcelo Ebrard with the low IQ, etc. But for our country the most serious It is not the alleged grievance to former foreign minister and future secretary of economyis the way in which Trump thinks it will be the relationship with Mexico and how it will be established based on threats.
The Lopez Obrador administration and in due time Peña Nieto’s, They were very wrong about Trump.
Peña Nieto received him as a candidate in Los Pinos, without having arranged a similar visit with his then opponent Hillary Clinton, when Trump threatened with the wall and the mass deportation of migrantswhen he said in his speeches that Mexicans were murderers and rapistsThat visit set the tone for the relationship.
That served to undermine Peña’s popularity, increase Trump’s and for Luis Videgaray, who was the one who managed that visit, to have a good relationship with Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and to open the door renegotiation of the FTA which ended already in the government of López Obrador, in the new USMCAwhich will have to be reviewed again in 2026.
Lopez Obrador He also acted on the defensive with TrumpThe president, who as a candidate had even written a very harsh book against Trump, when he arrived at the National Palace believed that he could put pressure on him by opening the borders. With Alejandro Encinas as undersecretary (Encinas’ management of both the immigration issue and Ayotzinapa has been very costly for the López Obrador government) it was decided to open the borders and the first waves of migration arrived, which had enormous media repercussions in the United States.
Trump responded with threatsas he said in his speech, as he had said before and as former prosecutor William Burr also recounts in detail in his memoirs, and President López Obrador decided that he could do anything but fight with Trump, he made a 180-degree turn, sent 27,000 soldiers and national guards to the border and agreed, under another name, to play the role of a safe third country for migrants and asylum seekers.
Since then we have said that this decision should not be understood only as a response to a demand from Trump, it was also a need for Mexico’s national security. No country in the world can have completely open borders, with the entry of hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world without even having efficient immigration control. Less so when we share a three thousand kilometer border with the United States. It was a demand from Trump but it was also a response to a need for domestic policy. A serious error had been made and it was necessary to correct it. But this administration is incapable of assuming that it has made errors. So it was decided to disguise decisions. Needless to say, since then Trump says that the wall was built by Mexican soldiers and he is paying for it.
Mexico. He is partly right.
Lopez Obrador He went further. In the middle of the 2020 campaign, he flew to Washington to be with Trump at the White House in what was interpreted as an explicit support for his campaign. He acted, what a paradox, exactly like Peña Nieto, who was so criticized for having received Trump at Los Pinos four years earlier.
The only hardening of López Obrador’s attitude towards Trump occurred with the arrest of General Salvador Cienfuegos: Although in the first hours he celebrated it, after intense military and political pressure demanded his release and finally he succeeded. Trump had lost the election in those days.
After the failed attack, at the first major rally after the Republican Convention, and already with Trump of candidate and with another harsh critic of immigration policy as JD Vance As vice president, he took up the subject again and it should be clear to us that Migration and fentanyl will be central chapters of his campaign and if on January 20th he reaches the White House of his government. To this we must add, because in his logic it is related, the issue of China and the automotive industry, including the export of Chinese cars to the United States.
Trump and Vance threaten tariffs and that will in turn intersect with the review (which for Trump is a renegotiation) of the USMCA in 2025-2026.
I didn’t like the immediate response they got. Claudia Sheinbaum and Marcelo Ebrard when what Trump said at the rally on Saturday began to spread. Firstly because they fell for the lie that the personal insult was for Marcelo without understanding that the recipient was Biden. But we must go further: what we must have is another policy, different from the one López Obrador had, in the face of the possibility that Trump returns to power.
A returning and more radical Trump will also be much tougher in a bilateral relationship than today with migration and fentanyl, but also with the automobile industry, relocation of companies, energy, agriculture, everything will be much more complex.
We insist: an agenda that diversifies policies and a greater capacity for dialogue and operation will be required. And to manage that agenda we must have a president who is present, politically and personally, in the United States, without betting on any candidate (that has always been a bad idea) but with a personal presence in the United States.
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