Trump as a Bully
By: Terry Schwadron
Tags: Trump, Foreign Policy, Immigration, Mexico, Deal

Terry H. Schwadron

June 9, 2019

Yes, we should celebrate the fact that Donald Trump called off a threatened set of increasing tariffs against Mexico in return for more aggressive policing of its borders against migrating Central Americans.

It was a vote from the singular, isolated U.S. government voice for what passes as rational behavior, though it was a chance for Trump to beat his chest instead.

But no, no celebrating for me. This is rewarding bullying behavior. And worse, bullying behavior seemingly without a singular goal, a flip-flopping bully. I wonder how Mexico, or Canada, or Britain or China or North Korea and Iran are going to react to threats from a bully who then backs down.

On its face, the “deal” was available from Mexico without the threat, without putting American farmers, car manufacturers and suppliers, and consumer prices for a vast array of products at risk. The New York Timesreported last night that the details had been worked out secretly months ago. Mexico had already been deporting tens of thousands of Central Americans and moving to block particular crossings into their country.

The “deal” seems to be a basic understanding for Mexico to deploy yet more National Guardsmen to the Guatemalan border, something that Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, basically has favored doing all along. (Perhaps National Guardsmen in Mexico can actually engage with migrants, unlike the law in the United States.) OK, the deal also endorses and expands an existing policy to allow the United States to return Central American migrants to Mexico while they await the adjudication of their asylum hearings in U.S. immigration courts, a process that can take months.

But the main sticking point — requiring Mexico to accept asylum requests from those coming to the U.S. border in the first country they reach — seemed to fall off the table.

Overall, however, Trump has insisted that the announced policy to set tariffs on an increasing monthly basis would continue unless there were demonstrable results from Mexico to halt the spiraling number of migrants headed towards our country. There were no measures provided, and, of course, this “deal” has not yet stopped a single person headed north.

Regardless of how you feel about immigration on the Southern border — illegal and legal, by individuals or families, from Mexico itself or from violence torn Guatemala and Honduras, with children or not, with or without walls — we ought to be able to agree that policies put into place should be effective and actually aimed at solving the specific problem at which the government is aiming.

In this case, dissension built even among Senate Republicans, the president’s political bulwark, because he aimed arrows of wrath at Mexican tariffs, while hoping to hit immigration targets. On top of the deteriorating talks with China over tariffs and trade policies, the tariffs against Mexico was widely denounced as, well, economically dumb. His critics, including newfound Republican naysayers, noted that the tariffs would upset supply lines, close down auto supply lines, affect prices at the supermarket, and kill a substantial number of U.S. jobs. Trump simply closed his eyes to all of this, ridiculed anyone with a contrarian view, and said that only he understands the power of tariffs.

Here’s what upsets me: The decision to call off tariffs with no evident results is just as bad as the decision to call for them in the first place. Each was a decision reached by Donald Trump alone, the emperor, who did not want to hear any information and commentary about what he wanted. It was a failed attempt to connect disparate dots on the policy grid, and handed down with a distinct taste and smell of smirk, meanness, and uncaring about the effects on American consumers (who vote) on Mexico, on Central American migrants, on American economic policy.

So, apparently, we can now expect flotilla of government airplanes to “solve” the perceived immigration policies by flying migrants non-stop to Mexico City to wait for years until the overbooked immigration courts get around to rejecting masses of Legal asylum requests. Migrants are being held in widely disparate conditions in Mexico, but, of course, Trump does not care a whit about that.

This Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) policy created this year already has faced legal challenge. While a federal appeals court panel in San Francisco has allowed it to temporarily continue while it reviews the policy, some judges have indicated that the MPP program might not be constitutional, The Washington Post notes.

Trump has grown increasingly frustrated by a record surge of migrant families at the border that has jumped unauthorized immigration to levels not seen in more than a dozen years. U.S. authorities apprehended 133,000 people at the southern border last month, more than twice as many as had been taken into custody in December. The figure is on pace to top 1 million arrests for fiscal 2019, with four months remaining, according to The Post.

Bottom line: Trump worsened an immigration problem with a bully pulpit and a series of bad decisions that included cutting off aid to the sources of migration in Central America. Instead, he has chosen to see marauders, gangs and drug mules invading the border rather than families seeking asylum from poverty and unchecked gang violence. Then he uses a trade policy to demand unmeasured actions by Mexico to stop the flow. Now, he has decided that sending more Mexican troops to the Guatemalan border is enough.

Meanwhile, he has tasked U.S. active military troops deployed to the border over the objection of the Pentagon to paint existing portions of the Wall black, so that it absorbs heat that would harm migrants who try to cross. And he has ordered the end of funds to be spent on recreation and education services for unaccompanied minors held at the border.

Celebrate? I suppose so, if you don’t look at the whole picture.

Make Trump Dictator could make a good hat, too. Vote for a Bully.

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www.terryschwadron.wordpress.com